The main objective of the EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard (the Scoreboard) is to benchmark the performance of EU innovation-driven industries against major global counterparts and to provide an R&D investment database that companies, investors and policymakers can use to compare individual company performances against the best global competitors in their sectors

Key Findings:

1. Global business sustained its R&D investments in 2020 despite being hit hard by the pandemic
2. The effect of the pandemic further boosted the fast-growing ICT services and Health industries while hitting the Automotive1 and Aerospace & defence sectors hard
3. The R&D specialisation of companies held back R&D investment of the EU group
4. The ongoing global technology race is reshaping the R&D specialisation patterns of the main world regions
5. The R&D intensity gap of the EU against its main competitors is largely  tructural and mostly due to a few high-tech sectors
6. High-tech companies are taking over more positions in the global R&D ranking and thus replacing companies from traditional sectors
7. The actual location of companies’ activities reveals EU’s opportunities to improve investment attractiveness for key segments of the value chain
8. A patent analysis reveals the positioning of the EU in green technology for energy intensive industries
9. Top R&D investors are increasingly improving their practices on the pathway to achieve UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs)