Research and Development Expenditures Critical for Economic Growth and Innovation

 Economies transition over time - from agricultural to industrial to services based  - the single most important factor that determines the growth trajectory and sector composition of an economy is its expenditure on research and development. 

Many billion-dollar industries of today can trace their origins back to humble beginnings in a research lab funded by some government or philanthropist or university grant.

For example, the role played by Stanford University Research in the origin and growth of the mighty Silicon Valley is well known today. 

Thomas Edison's Menlo Park is the birth place of many inventions/innovations like incandescent bulb, phonograph motion picture, alkaline batteries, telephony  - each of these inventions has changed our lives forever apart from kick-starting industries that churn out billions of dollars of revenues every year and providing employment to millions of people.

In this context, given below is the list of countries sorted by R & D expenditures as a proportion of GDP.

 Given below is the list of countries sorted by R & D expenditures in USD Billions adjusted for purchasing power.

 As always US and China are contending for the top spot with research spending in excess of 600 and 500 billion dollars respectively. Japan, Germany and India occupy third, fourth and fifth positions.

Although India is at the fifth position with a research spending on $ 125 billions, in percentage terms it accounts for a meager 1% of GDP.  Asian tigers South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore are spending larger proportions of their GDP on research and expenditure.

Is it not strange to believe that the future of our economies is dependent on some crazy scientist in a remote laboratory working on a random trial?

Data sourced from Wikipedia. User Discretion advised.