COMMENTARY Available to Purchase

Independent Research There are three rational ways a firm may spend money on research in the U.K. Firstly there are the university or technical colleges in which the results are, or should be, available to all the world; then there are the co‐operative research associations when the results are available to competitors in the U.K. (and possibly abroad); and lastly there are the private or ‘captive’ laboratories set up by the firm itself which usually has complete control of the results. This latter method uses by far the largest share of total research allocation and is at worst reduced to carrying out routine laboratory production control and trouble‐shooting.