Research and Development spending has an eye on the future success of companies and industries. 2016 R&D spending for the year has just been released by Bloomberg and some interesting things are happening. Of the 9 industries that are tracked only 3 industries increased their R&D budget in 2016; Software and Internet, Healthcare and Consumer.
The software numbers are amazing in that they are up over 15% compared with only a 2.6% increase in healthcare and only 0.7% for consumer products. If you include that software is a major component of innovation in other industries then the overall increase in software is much higher than the 15% number that is reported. The increase in software R&D is in a period of exponential growth and shows no sign of slowing down.
Healthcare is also on the rise and is projected to overtake computing and electronics in R&D spending by 2018 to become the largest sector. It looks like as baby boomers reach their retirement years, the healthcare industry is investing in research and developing new products and processes to accommodate them.
We see both of these trends in our business. Everyone is interested in healthcare and everything we work on seems to include a bit of software.
