Research and development; key figures per implementation sector

Table description

Description topics

R&D personnel

The personnel deployed for in-house R&D activities, expressed in numbers of working persons and years of work.

Employed persons

Someone working for a company located in the Netherlands, or an institution or private household in the Netherlands.

Persons employed are all persons having paid jobs, even for only one or some hours a week, and even if they:
- work legally as such, but without registration for income tax and social security (“undeclared work”);
- are temporarily not at work, but have continued receipt of wages or salary (for instance owing to illness or hold-ups due to frost);
are on a temporary unpaid-leave.

In order to be included in the R&D personnel a person employed needs to spend at least 0,1 FTE annually on R&D related activities.

Years of work

A benchmark for the volume of work, calculated by converting all jobs (full and part time) into full-time jobs, also known as full-time equivalent (FTE).

In this way, when taken together, the volume of work of two half jobs (0.5 FTE each) totals one year of work.

Expenditure on R&D

Expenditure on in-house R&D activities, expressed in millions of euros and as a percentage of the GDP (gross domestic product).

Expenditure R&D on in-house activities

R&D intensity

Expenditure on in-house R&D activities expressed as a percentage of the GDP (gross domestic product).
The R&D intensity is subject to adjustment until the gross domestic product is definitive.

Enterprises with in-house R&D activities

The statistical unit of the EU’s production system, comprising the smallest combination of legal units (or their equivalent). This is an organisational unit which produces goods and services and which has a certain level of independent decision-making authority, especially with respect to the use of its current assets. It may comprise one or more legal units and carry out one or more activities at one or more locations.

The way it presents itself, in the context of the prevailing economic realities, causes us to view the enterprise as an organisational unit.
It is the basis for the formation of the business unit, branch and local business unit.

The enterprise is an economic entity in which various legal units may come together under certain circumstances. Particular legal units carry out their activities exclusively on behalf of another legal entity and their existence is exclusively due to administrative (for example fiscal) factors, while from an economic standpoint they are not significant. This category also includes many of the legal units which have no staff. In many cases, the activities of these legal units should be viewed as supplementary activities alongside the activities of the legal mother unit on which they depend and to which they should be linked in order to form the unit of “enterprise” used for the economic analysis.

Research & Development (R&D)
Activity which strives for originality and innovation and consists of creatively, systematically and methodically seeking solutions to practical problems. The activity also includes strategic and fundamental research, which prioritises the acquisition of background knowledge and the increase of (pure) scientific knowledge and does not prioritise direct economic advantage or the resolution of problems. The activity is also considered to include the (further) development of ideas or prototypes into usable processes and production-ready products.

The following are NOT counted as R&D:
- the routine collection of or research into information, carrying out measurements or monitoring;
- the use or marginal improvement of existing methods or models for ends such as market research or socio-demographic issues;
- education and training;
- activities related to patents and licences;
- operationalising technology or advanced (production) equipment that has been purchased;
- rewriting existing software and/or making software which is already available on the market client-specific;
- industrial design, unless there is a systematic desire for ergonomic enhancements.