Why R&D?

What is research? And what is development? A layman would ask these questions to begin with. Follow-up questions would be: Does development really require research? Finally people may ask why develop? Why take such a hassle? Let’s copy and do something. The R&D story will end before it begins with this type of attitude. This is pretty similar to the Sri Lankan context which has resulted in lowly performance as a country.

What we need to understand is that the innovation through R&D is the major competitive advantage a country could have. According to an address by Dr. A.P.J Abdul Kalam to a gathering of tech students at Mahindra Ecole College in 2015, he claims that there are two sets of countries – developed countries and developing countries. The difference between these two are the competitiveness. Dr. Kalam takes the Global Competitiveness Index as an example. If we look at current rankings, Singapore is ranked one in the index.