Neighbor Competition
On May 21, the Hyundai Research Institute released a report as to the efficiency of R&D activities by Korean, Chinese, and Japanese listed companies.
According to the report, the average size of the intangible assets created by R&D for the last four years was the smallest in Korean companies, while their Chinese counterparts showed the highest rate of increase during the past five years.
Specifically, the average by company was US$165.3 million in Korea, US$355.2 million in Japan, and US$172.4 million in China last year. The rate of increase between 2010 and 2014, in the meantime, was 28.9 percent in China, 14.0 percent in Japan, and 11.8 percent in Korea.
The Korean companies recorded the lowest ratio of intangible assets to average R&D investment, too. It was in Korea as well that the ratio showed the least improvement in comparison to 2010. The intangible assets of Korean listed companies were equivalent to 11.8 times their average R&D investment last year, whereas the ratio amounted to 29.7 times for the Chinese and 22.1 times for the Japanese. The size showed a 1.5-fold increase in China and a 2.5-fold increase in Japan during the same period, while declining to a 60 percent level in Korea.