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Comment by chalst | Hacker News Reader

> The technology from your iPhone wouldn't have been possible without Apple's big R&D department.

It's interesting that you point to Apple. Compared to companies with a more old-fashioned approach to R&D (Xerox, Bell Labs, IBM, Microsoft), Apple spends relatively little on R&D, and does practically nothing of genuine scientific value. I would hold up Apple as an example of the profitable "focus research on specific products, buy research expertise rather than cultivate it in the firm, forget science" approach to R&D.

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Apple is the top spender on R&D, as a percentage of its revenue. Second is Google. 3rd Samsung, 4th Amazon, 5th 3M. [1]

Xerox had about 10 years of glorious moon-shot type research. IBM is notoriously fickle about spending on R&D.

The only exception is Bell Labs, which succeeded due to a combination of a number of factors [2]. There wasn't any grand vision underlying it, just the interest to grab the best and the brightest, during a time when there was far less silo-ing and over-specialization than today.

[1] http://www.booz.com/global/home/what-we-think/global-innovat...

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/books/review/the-idea-fact...

Please look again at the figures in the link you provide: Apple is larger than each of the companies I mentioned (very slightly larger than Samsung by 2012 sales; I'm not sure why 3M is in your list - they are 1/4 the size of Apple in a far lower margin industry), and spends less in absolute terms on R&D than each, and far less as a percentage of revenue.

IBM has an excellent track record of scientific contributions, has an excellent research institute, and I gather is good about things like giving its employees time to write scientific articles and providing support to employees who wish to pursue PhDs. Xerox PARC still exists and still does good, publically visible research. I don't see what "grand vision" has to do with anything.

Note, the rankings are: > as a percentage of its revenue.

Also, regarding 3M, I am not sure what you mean by 'far lower margin industry'. 3M is a conglomerate. It's like GE, in some sense- doesn't play in any single industry, but in several tens of industries.

I think that ranking cannot be by %age R&D spend. Taking the R&D expenditure from your link, and turnover from the accounts for 2012, we have (money values in $bn):

              R&D    Turnover   R&D/turnover
    Apple     3.4    156        2.2%
    Samsung   10.4   188        5.5%

Yeah, Apple doesn't really invent stuff, they generally just come out with the same incremental technology improvements as every other company. They're mostly just good at combining components into aesthetically pleasing products, and then claiming to have invented every feature from scratch.

Its like if Mercedes Benz claimed "only we could come up with the idea of a steering wheel, seat belts and a motor" when announcing their new model vehicles every year.

Can you show me one place where they claim to have invented every feature from scratch?

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