R&D is not innovation

Somehow, you would expect that people would understand the difference between R&D and innovation. Unfortunately these terms have been used so often together that people started to believe that innovation is the consequence of R&D. Although there might sometimes be a link between the two (just as there is a link between number of smart employees and innovation and many other factors), does not mean you can equal these terms.

http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2011/01/17/nederland-internationaal-in-achterhoede-met-rd/

What the statistics in the (Dutch) article actually say is that Finland, Japan and Sweden spent a lot of money on R&D. It does not say what the outcome of this spending is. As Swedish experts in innovation from INNOVA have indicated themselves is that all this high spending on R&D has not lead to economic growth or an increase of number of jobs. Probably it just indicates the importance of R&D intensive industries like automotive and ICT for these three top countries. These industries use heavy investments in R&D to innovate on their hardware and processes. Other industries innovate using another strategies that don't consist of heavy R&D spending.