2019
GLOBAL R&D
FUNDING FORECAST
The Future of R&D
T
he U.S. and global economies are slowing from their peaks in 2018 and they are expected to Biggest R&D Threats in the Future slow a bit more in 2020. But they’re still expected to grow and a recession is not in any economist’s schedule at this time. This is a unique economic Domestic competitors 49% situation because the U.S. and the world have been on European competitors 22% a non-stop recovery and growth splurge for more than 10 years since the 2009 recession. Non-China Asian competitors 15% More economists are now stating that there is enough economic capacity to see another five years Chinese competitors 45% of economic growth. There is also a plethora of new technologies that look to be supported over the near 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% term as well. Source: R&D Magazine Survey 2018 These include: 1) the explosion of AI-based technologies and applications; 2) the automotive transition to 100% electrical power systems with no let-up in sight; were on equal footing as U.S. technology companies, but now 3) the simultaneous automotive transition to autonomous no longer. There are still some European companies, espedriver controls; 4) the explosion of technologies for manned cially in the aerospace, automotive and materials industries, exploration and excursions to the moon and Mars; and 5) the that are close in technologies and standing to U.S. technology continued growth of robotics and automation into all aspects companies, but not as many overall as was the case. of society with the inclusion of AI systems. This is all great news for many R&D organizations’ R&D budgets which could Most Important Technologies by 2021 see very reasonable increases for at least another five years. Additive manufacturing 27% The most important technologies by 2021 (three years from now), according Artificial intelligence 30% to our survey, mirror these new R&D Big data 30% technologies. Information technologies (IT) and software are the top two more Bioengineering/biology 29% important technologies chosen by our Bionanotechnology 16% survey respondents. They’re also very visible components of all five of the new Cloud computing 20% R&D technologies. Big data and AI— Embedded processing 12% the next most selected technologies by 2021—are also strong contributors in Information technologies 33% these new technologies. Genomics/proteomics 16% When queried about who were the Medical diagnostics/healthcare biggest R&D threats in the future, our 23% survey respondents indicated that Nanotechnology 26% domestic and Chinese competitors were Quantum computing 6% the largest R&D threats to their R&D enterprises. That is a startling revelaRenewable energy 18% tion, in that Chinese and domestic U.S. Robotics/automation 28% competitors are for the first time now on the same footing as U.S. R&D compaSoftware 32% nies. It should be noted that the Chinese Space technologies 11% technology companies are far ahead of non-China Asian competitors and even Sustainability 24% European competitors, again for the very 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% first time. Source: R&D Magazine Survey 2018 In the past, European competitors
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WINTER 2019
R&D Magazine
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