Not dismissing what @martyfunkhouser is asking at all, I think...

Not dismissing what @martyfunkhouser is asking at all, I think valid questions.

Two things I wanted to add that I’ve learnt over the years

1. Management are highly incentivised to talk up their R&D spend as a % of costs. For Aussie companies this translates to capitalisation of salaries and other expenses - because it’s “for the future”. I slightly lean towards companies that are conservative in this area or expense everything. As this is essentially the most rational thing for long term managers to do - reduce immediate tax burden.

2. R&D spend can be a very poor indicator of improvement and progress. For example Intel would have had one of the largest R&D budgets in the past two decades. But through poor decisions: lack mobile focus, investment in fab tech, deprioritised of performance per watt - has had their huge lead completely eroded by fabless, mobile focused companies - Apple, Qualcomm, nvidia, AMD. Are competitors investments in chemical filters and vaporisation manufacturing techniques in the same category? Big multi-billion dollar question!