The figures published by an European Commission's survey show the importance that top EU businesses companies place on R&D as a key factor for their future growth and prosperity, despite the current economic difficulties. In fact, it is expected that their investments in research and development grow by an average of 4% annually over the period 2012 to 2014.

The EU Survey on R&D Investment Business Trends which was carried out by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) shows that top EU businesses expect their investments in research and development to grow by an average of 4% annually over the period 2012 to 2014. The front runner is the software and computer services sector, which expects R&D investment to grow by 11% per year on average. In-house R&D is seen as the most relevant driver of innovation by the surveyed companies, followed by market research and related activities for new product introduction. However, EU companies lag behind in R&D investments compared to global competitors, according to the Scoreboard published in October 2011.

The survey results also show the strong importance given to various ways of sharing knowledge by many companies, which could be a sign of the increasing role of open innovation. Collaboration agreements with other companies stand out as the most important. For companies active in high R&D intensity sectors, this is followed by licensing in/out with other companies, and then agreements with higher education institutions and other public research organisations. In addition to this, when asked about effects of policies and external factors on their innovation activities, surveyed companies highlighted the strong positive effects of fiscal incentives, national grants, EU financial support and public-private partnerships both at national and EU level.

The survey results are based on 187 responses of mainly larger companies from the 1,000 EU-based companies in the 2011 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard. Taken together, these 187 companies are responsible for R&D investment worth almost €45 billion, constituting around 40% of the total R&D investment by the 1,000 EU Scoreboard companies, which is a significant share of European business investment in R&D. The 4% average growth level is slightly down on the 5% growth expected in the previous survey, reflecting the worsening of the economic context.