Gartner Research

R&D Portfolio Allocation by Project Type: Technology-Intensive Industry Survey Findings

Published: 22 May 2023

Summary

Gartner recently collected data on how R&D organizations allocate resources among sustaining engineering, incremental, next-generation and transformational projects. R&D leaders responsible for functional strategy and management can use this information to benchmark or rebalance their R&D portfolio.

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Overview

Key Findings
  • Seventy-three percent of organizations review their R&D portfolio at least once per quarter.

  • On average, R&D organizations in technology-intensive industries allocate 36% of their total R&D spend to research activities, while 64% is allocated to development.

  • Thirty-nine percent of projects in the average R&D portfolio utilize emerging technologies, while 61% utilize established technologies.

  • On average, R&D organizations in technology-intensive industries allocate 48% of their total R&D spend to sustaining engineering and 52% to innovation projects. On average, organizations allocate 44% of their budget for innovation initiatives to incremental projects, 36% to next-generation projects and 21% to transformational projects.

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