The pharmaceutical and biotechnology sector is now the biggest investor in research and development as it surpassed the technology hardware and equipment sector in 2006. Pfizer led the pack with total R&D investment of $7.6 billion, an increase of 2.1 percent over the previous year, according to the European Commission’s Joint Research Center’s 2007 EU industrial R&D investment Scoreboard. Several pharmaceutical companies in the list of the top 50 R&D investors showed significant increases in R&D spending in 2006 over the previous year including Merck (24.3 percent), AstraZeneca (15.5 percent), Roche (15.5 percent), Johnson & Johnson (12.9 percent), Novartis (10.7 percent), and GlaxoSmithKline (10 percent). Worldwide, investment in R&D rose 10 percent over 2005.

Ranking of industry sectors by R&D spending