The workshop has been set against the background of the 2014 edition of the Industrial R&D Scoreboard which analyses the R&D investment of 2500 leading companies around the world, who collectively account for around 90% of world business R&D. This year's edition shows that R&D investments by companies in the EU grew by 2.6% in 2013 despite the unfavourable economic circumstances, but that this increase is much lower than in other world regions, notably in high-tech sectors.
This workshop contributed to a better understanding of companies' practices and strategies in the domain of R&D while providing feedback from industrial representatives and policy-makers on the usefulness and relevance of experts' research questions and results around the IRIMA project. It also contributed to the identification of key issues where further research and analysis to broaden the evidence-base is needed in order to support needs of practitioners (companies) and policy makers.