Watching Their Wallets
The rankings of 1989's top 100 spenders on industrial R&D suggests that the R&D slowdown in the U.S. has begun to reach the labs of industry leaders. Technical Insights, Inc., the Englewood, N.J., firm that publishes Inside R&D, a weekly newsletter, finds in its latest annual survey that last year the top 100, headed by General Motors, increased research spending by 8.7 percent, after posting spending gains of 10.7 percent the previous year. Charles Joslin, editor ofInside R&D, attributes the slowdown to "a general reluctance to look that far ahead" - and to fear of rising costs that would make the firms vulnerable to takeovers. Among the biggest increases in spending was accounted for by Bristol-Myers Squibb, now spending $789 million per year and ranked number 14, thanks to the merger last year of Bristol-Myers, then ranked 35, and Squibb, 44. Bristol-Myers Squibb is now the top...
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