R&I expenditure numbers are extremely slanted if you count private expenditure as that's mostly tax categories. E.g. hiring a developer doesn't mean that you ar

R&I expenditure numbers are extremely slanted if you count private expenditure as that's mostly tax categories. E.g. hiring a developer doesn't mean that you are doing R&I, its often just the cost of business. But in the statistics especially the big companies will mark anything that isn't sales, support or logistics as R&I as that brings tax benefits. I would argue the big molochs are bad for economy and society. Apple and Google are proportionally not more innovative than a random small German or French software house, they just have more scale to market/sell/push their products.