The phrase "
Research and Development" (also appearing as "
R and D" or as "
R&D") has a special commercial significance apart from its conventional coupling of
research and technological
development. In the context of
commerce, "Research and Development" normally refers to
future-oriented, longer-term activities in
science and/or
technology, mimicking
scientific research in their (relative) disregard of the traditional
accountant's questions of the type: "But what are the commercial applications?".
Statistics on the proportion of an organisational budget devoted to "R&D" (like statistics on numbers of patents or on rates of peer-reviewed publications) may express the state of an industry, the degree of competition or the lure of scientific progress.