Leading the Pack: Trends for the Top 200 Engineering Research & Development (ER&D) Enterprises 2021

Today, with technology becoming central to both product functioning and the delivery of high-impact experiences, Engineering Research & Development (ER&D) has become vital for enterprises to maintain their competitive advantage. While the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the ER&D market and affected enterprises in verticals such as automotive and aerospace & defense, it proved to be a driver for verticals such as software products and consumer electronics, which grew significantly due to increased consumer demand.

In this research, we present a fact-based view of the global ER&D market, with a focus on the top 200 enterprises with the highest ER&D spend across nine industry verticals. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, global business spend on ER&D activities reduced by 1.4% in 2020 to reach US$1.26 trillion, and the enterprises covered in this report accounted for 43.5% of this spend.

Our research studies the top 200 ER&D enterprises’ key investment areas, ER&D spend growth, and ER&D spend intensity or ER&D spend as a percentage of revenue. We also examine prominent themes driving growth in the ER&D space and note the advances in technology investments in cloud engineering, accessibility engineering, autonomous and connected vehicles, Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), additive manufacturing, and 5G adoption, among others.