RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

Research and Development



Research and Development

Introduction

Research and development is a field that real significant in any field that requires inquiring. In to today's era research has been considered as a vital part of any study. Geographies of research and development (R&D) involve the study of spatial patterns and processes that emerge from the production of basic and applied research, on the one hand, and from how R&D activities articulate within the communities in which they are so deeply embedded, on the other.

The significance of R&D in the current global context emerges from the critical role that technology and innovations have come to play in economic development. Intrinsic to understanding the significance of R&D is the need to appreciate the interaction between regions and economic processes and how spatial ideas such as distribution, arrangement, clustering, agglomeration, and so on, permeate the notion of interconnection and interdependence across space. A predominant characteristic of the current phase of globalization is economic restructuring resulting in deindustrialization and lay-offs, restructuring in the methods of production, and the emergence of new manufacturing and service sector activities resulting from the emphasis on flexible production systems. This new mode of production has displayed a heavy reliance on new knowledge and on access to and processing of appropriate information. These ideas owe their debt to conceptualizations in Michael Porter's famous book The Competitive Advantage of Nations, where he established the relationships between high technology and competitive strategy in the wake of global economic restructuring. Porter's work provoked a new research agenda among those who were interested in regional economic development.

Contextualizing R&D

From a regional economic development perspective, the significance of R&D is that it helps enhance competitiveness and employment. As such, R&D indicators are seen as drivers of economic development. Indicators such as academic R&D, employment in high-technology establishments as a share of total employment, industry-performed R&D as a share of private industry output, net high-technology business formations as a share of all business establishments, R&D as a share of gross national product, and venture capital have been studied statistically to give operational empirical meaning to the geographies of R&D. However, in the literature on regional economic development, the term research and development has not been defined categorically. The closest that researchers have come is in terms of its indicators, while others continue to consider R&D as a subset of science and technology. In fact, there has never been a formal attempt by geographers, economists, or regional scientists to distinguish R&D from science and technology (Huang, 2004, 23).

In the United States, from a federal government perspective, while the terms R&D and science and technology have been used interchangeably, they do not mean the same thing. There are two aspects of the government perspective: the military and the civilian. From the military angle, science and technology activities are a subset of R&D activities, while from the civilian angle; R&D activities are a subset of science and technology activities. From within the civilian side of the federal government and in particular for departments such as NASA, DOE, and NSF, R&D activities are a subset of science and technology activities.

Japan

Since the formulation of the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) in 2000, the Japanese ...