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In the quest to create cutting-edge products, organizations often invest substantial time, attention, and capital in primary research and development (R&D). By themselves, these R&D investments to create avant-garde products may not provide good return-on-investment. In the context of Canadian businesses, there is a significant scarcity of resources available for R&D. What can Canadian firms do to stay innovative when they face a plethora of difficulties, including insufficient funding? This article explores how organizations can leverage external innovation and existing technologies to create products or services that cater to the market needs. We present a three-pillar model along with examples of companies that attained market success in large part by contextualizing existing technologies in order to create innovative products or services. This approach provides companies with a high-level framework to facilitate resource-parsimonious creation of commercializable, innovative products that are competitive in today's global marketplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A decision problem-allocating public research and development (R&D) funding-is faced by a planner who has ambiguous knowledge of welfare effects of the various research areas. We model this as a reverse portfolio choice problem faced by a Bayesian decision-maker. Two elements of the planner's inferential system are developed: a conditional distribution of welfare 'returns' on an allocation, given stated preferences of citizens for the different areas, and a minimum risk criterion for re-allocating these funds, given the performance of a status quo level of funding. A case study of Canadian public research funds expended on various applications of agricultural biotechnology is provided. The decision-making methodology can accommodate a variety of collective expenditure and resource allocation problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Competing claims are made about the amount of money that pharmaceutical companies spend on research and development (R&D) versus promotion. This study investigates this question in the Canadian context. Methods: Two methods for determining industry-wide figures for spending on promotion were employed. First, total industry spending on detailing and journal advertising for 2013-2016 was abstracted from reports from QuintilesIMS. Second, the mean total promotion spending for the years 2002-2005 was used to estimate total spending for 2013-2016. Total industry spending on R&D came from the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board (PMPRB). R&D to promotion spending using each method of determining the amount spent on promotion was compared for 2013-2016 inclusive. Data on the 50 top promoted drugs, the amounts spent, the companies marketing these products and their overall sales were abstracted from the QuintilesIMS reports. Spending on R&D and promotion as a percent of sales was compared for these companies. Results: Industry wide, the ratio of R&D to promotion spending went from 1.43 to 2.18 when promotion was defined as the amount spent on detailing and journal advertising for the 50 most promoted drugs. Calculating total promotion spending from the mean of the 2002-2005 figures the ratio was 0.88 to 1.32 for the 50 most promoted drugs. For individual companies marketing one or more of the 50 most promoted drugs, mean R&D spending ranged from 3.7% of sales to 4.1% compared to mean promotion spending that went from 1.7 to 1.9%. The ratio of spending on R&D to promotion varied from 2.11 to 2.32. Eight to 10 companies per year spent more on promotion than on R&D. Conclusions: Depending on the method used to determine promotion spending, industry-wide the ratio of R&D spending to promotion ranges from 1.45 to 2.18 (sales representatives and journal advertising only) or from 0.88 to 1.32 (total promotion spending estimated based 2003-2005 data.) For the individual companies promoting one or more of the 50 most promoted drugs, 2.11 to 2.32 times more is spent on R&D compared to promotion. However these results should be interpreted cautiously because of data limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that Canada's federal 2015 budget for research and development focuses on industry-driven research, instead of discovery-driven science. Topics discussed include budget allocated to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), critics' call for a more balanced funding for research, and the reactions of post-secondary sector groups.

The article looks at the impact of budget constraint on the restructuring of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research's (CHIR) investigator-initiated grants, peer review system and the governance and funding of several institutes. Topics discussed include the annual funding increase allocated for research on antimicrobial resistance and the Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research (SPOR) and the goal of CIHR's health research reforms.

A letter to the editor is presented in response to the article about the need to research and development (R&D) expenditure in Canada which rank seventh and sixth in the world's research output and impact in the September 2012 issue.