Research Spending to Decrease For Next Few Years. Probably Not Good For America's Competitiveness, Right?

I just did a post featuring some commentary by Ram Charan in which he talked about the need to not cut back on investments in product development, marketing, innovation, etc when the economy worsens.  Basically, don't sell your children as they are the future. 

But nevertheless, companies invariably do this.  Spend like crazy during the booms and cut back (somewhat arbitrarily and across the board) during the troughs.  The latest research reports on this seem to validate this phenomenon again. 

Keep an eye on those organizations that think in a contraries manner and actually spend more on R&D now.  They will be positioned for good things down the road. 

More generally, companies should focus on re-engineering non-customer and non-innovation oriented activities all the time so that they can keep investing in those activities which sustain and ultimately grow the franchise - R&D for example.