r&d

Readers may have noticed the most populous states end up topping many of the statistical tables related to economic development. Normalizing the data by some relevant, related measure can provide a higher quality look that is a little closer to the “apples to apples” appeal that might help influence some policy issues. For this week’s edition of Useful Stats, SSTI is exploring research intensity as a component of state gross domestic product (GDP) and the research load “carried” by each member of the R&D personnel within the state’s higher education community.

Higher education R&D expenditures, while continuing to steadily increase, have not grown evenly across state lines. This matters to successful TBED policymakers because a strong R&D enterprise within a state’s public and private institutions of higher education can and should provide a consistent source of skilled workers, new technology, and sources for innovation-driven business growth. So where is R&D growing?

The most recent  Higher Education R&D (HERD) survey revealed the largest year-over-year percentage increase in higher education R&D since 2002 to 2003 and dollar increase across all fiscal years (FYs) captured by the survey. HERD expenditures breached the $100 billion mark in 2023, having grown 11% from $97.8 billion in 2022 to $108.8 billion in 2023 (7% in constant 2017 dollars, from $82.9 to $89 billion).

The European Union is engaged in a debate about changing its systems for R&D funding, the first potentially significant changes since its current framework program began in 1984. A group of 15 individuals from research and industry selected by the European Commission last year has submitted a report, Align, act, accelerate, which gives recommendations for overhauling the system.

Manufacturing industries accounted for approximately $372 billion, or 54%, of all domestic business enterprise R&D (BERD) expenditures in 2022, up 36% from $274 billion in 2018. Despite this increase of nearly $100 billion over the past five years, the share of BERD expenditures in manufacturing industries has decreased eight percentage points from its 2018 value of 62%.

While both gross domestic product (GDP) and population have steadily increased across the United States over the last decade, the growth of business enterprise R&D (BERD) expenditures has surged ahead at an even faster pace.

As business R&D expenditures continue to increase nationwide, disparities between states deepen, an SSTI analysis of new Business Enterprise Research and Development (BERD) survey data reveals.

Domestic business R&D expenditures have jumped 15% ($89 billion) from 2021 to 2022. This jump continues a decade-long trend of year-over-year increases, as a new 2022 Business Enterprise R&D (BERD) survey shows.

For the last 40 years, higher education has been the dominant performer of basic research in the United States, but there has been a slide in higher education’s share over the last 20 years as businesses have increased their performance of basic R&D (Figure 1). If the current trendline continues, businesses will soon surpass higher education as basic R&D performers and become the predominant basic R&D performer just as they have been in applied R&D for decades.

During a recent webinar presented by the National Semiconductor Technology Center (NSTC), center representatives announced details of its initial round of R&D funding opportunities, as outlined in its vision for 2024 document. The projects to be funded, which NSTC refers to as Jump Start Projects, are (1) AI-based Radio Frequency (RF) Design and (2) Test Vehicles.