Better measurement for innovation
2020 Trends in R&D / Innovation Spending
Understanding how your competitors’ R&D spending patterns have changed over the last 12 months can help you predict how they’ll behave in the future. The visualizations are designed to provide insight into companies’ historic behavior. For more background, read our blog post here.
If you have questions about the data or how to interpret the trends in your sector, please contact us directly: phil@commodoreinnovation.co
The data
■ Which metrics? Quarterly R&D expenditure and R&D intensity (ratio of R&D expense to revenue)
■ Which companies? All companies who report R&D expense and revenue data to the US SEC on a quarterly basis (some companies only report R&D expenditure on an annual basis).
■ What time period? From Q4 of 2019 to Q3 of 2020 (only SEC filings up to November 30th, 2020 are currently included).
How to use the visualization
1. Select the subset of companies you want to compare.
Use either the Sector drop-down filter, or the Company Name drop-down filter. You can display as many companies as you want, but fewer than 10 keeps things visually simple.
Note: you can also use the R&D Expense filter to exclude companies by the size of their R&D investment — click on the min or max currently shown to edit.
2. Select the time period of interest
The first graph compares trends in innovation investment across two quarters. Use the Select Quarter drop down to choose the period of interest. Note: the quarter selected is the final quarter of the comparison period (e.g. if 2020 Q1 is selected, the graph displays results comparing 2019 Q4 with 2020 Q1).
3. Review the data
There are two sections to the data visualization. The first compares change in investment for the selected quarter. The second section shows innovation investment trends over time for each of the select companies.
Note: the first graph will only display labels of some of the selected companies. Hover over an unlabeled data point to see the company it represents.
Interpreting the visualization
The first graph in the visualization displays the results in a 2×2 matrix, similar to the diagram below. The quadrant a company is located in helps you understand their strategic intent for that quarter—as illustrated in the diagram.
