CompanyGraph
Research spending records an input. Innovation is the uncertain process that turns knowledge, people, equipment, approvals, and customer adoption into economic output.
How can you screen for R&D investment?
R&D intensity usually compares research and development expense with revenue. It is most useful within industries where reporting and development cycles are comparable. A high ratio can mean ambitious investment, weak current revenue, or both.
How does the CompanyGraph R&D screen work?
The R&D Investment Configuration requires three latest-annual observations to fire: R&D expense as an elevated share of revenue, intangible assets as an elevated share of total assets, and capital expenditure above depreciation under the configured mapping.
A match establishes the coexistence of those inputs. It does not show that R&D created the recorded intangibles, because acquired assets can dominate the balance sheet. Capex above depreciation may fund laboratories or manufacturing, but it may also replace old assets or serve unrelated operations.
R&D Spending Elevated With Intangible-Heavy Balance Sheet And Capex Above Depreciation
R&D-to-sales is elevated, intangible assets are a substantial share of total assets, and capital expenditures exceed depreciation
Why is intangible concentration not an innovation screen?
Goodwill and acquired intangibles often arise from business combinations. Internally generated brands, research, data, and know-how may be absent from the balance sheet. A separate intangible-concentration panel was removed because goodwill-to-assets and goodwill-to-equity say more about acquisition accounting and balance-sheet composition than current innovation investment.
How does accounting affect R&D comparisons?
IAS 38 generally expenses research and permits capitalization of development only when specified criteria are met. Different project stages, judgments, and accounting frameworks can therefore change both expense and assets without changing the underlying engineering work.
Read capitalization policy, amortization, impairment, and acquisition notes. IAS 36 covers impairment testing, while IFRS 3 explains why acquired identifiable intangibles and goodwill appear after deals.
What evidence shows innovation productivity?
Match spending with outputs appropriate to the industry: product launches, regulatory approvals, yield improvement, process cost, patents where economically relevant, customer adoption, retention, unit economics, and incremental gross profit. Check the lag between spending and commercialization.
Trace the physical organization: scientists, engineers, clinical sites, compute, laboratories, tooling, manufacturing scale-up, suppliers, and approvals. Ask who controls budgets, which projects can be stopped, and how failure is recorded.
What creates false innovation signals?
Low revenue can inflate R&D intensity. Acquisitions can inflate intangibles. One capital project can lift capex/depreciation. Capitalized development can shift cost from the income statement to assets. Conversely, a productive organically developed platform may have few recognized intangibles.
How should you use the innovation screen?
Use the panel to find companies with the exact three-part investment configuration. A zero result means no company in the evaluated universe met all observations with available annual data. It does not show that no company innovates.
The screen does not measure project probability, intellectual-property enforceability, employee retention, time to market, incremental returns, funding runway, or valuation. Treat a match as an invitation to study investment productivity, not as proof of an innovation advantage.