A groundbreaking 2008 survey of R&D programs at 69 publicly traded companies concluded that the stock market rewards companies with stronger R&D investments, and tends to punish those that reduce R&D spending. The survey, “Do innovations really pay off? Total stock market returns to innovation,” was conducted by marketing professors Gerard Tellis at the University of Southern California and Emory University's Ashish Sood.
 
The study found that the stock market rewards companies on average of 4.5 years before ...