Global warning for governments to step up R&D spending
pharmafile | October 21, 2015 | News story | Research and Development |
Countries should step up their investment in long-term R&D to develop disruptive technologies that will reshape industry, healthcare and communications, according to a major new report.
A study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) ranked the UK bottom of an international cohort of ‘top players in disruptive technologies’. Between 2010 and 2012 the UK had only a 2.6% share of the patents filed in the IP5, the five largest intellectual property offices in the world.
The UK figure for 2010-2012 was even lower than the figure for 2005-2007, when the UK registered 3.9% of IP5 patents. The league table is dominated by the US, which notched up 42.8% of IP5 patents between 2010 and 2012.
The OECD is an international economic organisation of 34 countries that work collaboratively to stimulate economic progress and world trade. It put the United States, Japan and Korea far in the lead in a new generation of ‘disruptive’ technologies in advanced materials, health, and information and communication technology that have the potential to displace existing processes. Korea in particular has made great strides in these fields recently, the OECD report found.
Total R&D spending in OECD countries grew by 2.7% in real terms in 2013 to $1.1 trillion – a rise driven by industry. Governments increased R&D spending during the economic crisis to support businesses, but since 2010 R&D funded or performed by governments in many advanced economies has declined or flattened.
These cuts to R&D spending threaten to destabilise science and research systems in many advanced economies, the OECD warns. The warning echoes those from senior industry leaders within the UK, who wrote to the Chancellor George Osborne to urge him not to cut Government spending on R&D ahead of the autumn spending review.
The OECD says that given 70% of R&D in the member countries takes place within the business sector, and tends to focus on developing specific applications that improve on previous versions, the report underscores the need for governments to keep up their spending on the more open-ended ‘basic research’ that can spawn brand new findings and inventions relevant to a range of potential users.
Presenting the report in Daejeon, Korea, OECD secretary-general, Angel Gurría, said: “Public funding has underpinned many of the technologies driving growth today, from the digital economy to genomics. We must continue to lay the technological foundations for new inventions and solutions to global challenges like climate change and ageing and must not let investment in long-term research wane.”
Lilian Anekwe
