European companies confident about future

The Alma Consulting Group has published its sixth Funding for Innovation study, which provides an overview of research and development spending in a sample of companies of different sizes carrying out R&D activities throughout the economy. For the first time, this study focuses on Europe and more than 1,000 French, British, German, Spanish and Portuguese companies. These firms were asked about their R&D funding and aid provided to them. The conclusions of the study are as follows:

The crisis has had an impact on innovation: almost 64% of companies declared that the slowdown in the economy has had a medium or high impact on their innovation activities. Only 10% of them consider that there has been no impact.

The vast majority of companies (79%) demonstrate genuine optimism about the future and are confident in their innovation, which will be the gauge of their future competitiveness. Far from improvising, the majority of them (77%) are developing R&D strategies that are clearly defined and will help them to achieve competitiveness objectives.

The three strategic priorities most often mentioned by companies for finding an exit strategy from the crisis are innovation - to obtain strong competitive advantages (69%), development at an international level (39%) and reduced costs (36%).

To maintain a good level of competitiveness despite the crisis, a very significant majority of companies (91%) are maintaining or increasing their R&D activities: 44% have increased their R&D workforce and almost 50% have increased their R&D budgets.

R&D tax credits have had a positive and measurable impact on protecting jobs for 55% of companies, while 45% of them say that this has led to greater job creation in R&D. Almost three quarters of companies now consider this as an indispensable tool for funding their R&D policy.

In the context of what funding tools are employed, national mechanisms are cited and account for 94% of funding, whereas European funds only represent three out of ten funding instruments. (I.L./transl.fl)