"A crisis is a terrible thing to waste."

This rather witty quote attributed to Paul Romer is particularly poignant during this sluggish economy. A leader in the “New Growth Theory,” Romer advocates the notion that long-term growth is propelled by spending on education, research & development, and new business subsidies.

This rather recent economic view takes opposition to core aspects of Neo-Classic Economic theory that focuses more on the short-term stimulus by way of capital inputs and labor efficiency. With economic forces fueling job loss and cost cuts, slashes in expenses often manifests in wage cutbacks, keeping the Keynesian prescription for growth stagnant.

However, despite funds being diverted away from labor costs, spending on Research & Development has actually increased over the past year.

Apart from big industry companies, like Detroit auto-makers, thirty of the largest companies have, on average, sustained their R&D spending, despite a revenue loss of 0.7 percent the past quarter. 3M, Intel, and Microsoft are keeping up their R&D spending with a clear vision of future profits. Apple is the research success story – their aggressive spending in the early 2000s, despite drops in revenue, came to fruition with their iPod and iTunes success.

Technology is constantly improving and if companies want to stay ahead of the curve, they need to think of the long-term when dolling out limited resources. Globally speaking, China and India have surpassed U.S. growth in R&D spending (4%) by three percent.

Although the 10% unemployed Americans may clamor over limited revenue being allocated to expensive research that may or may not pan out several years in the future, economically speaking, it is a risk worth taking. If American companies slack on R&D spending in favor of keeping more employees on the payroll, they could lose technological ground to their Asian competitors.

So in order to take advantage of these bleak economic times, instead of cutting investment in research, companies should ramp-up their spending and hope for the best. Though no research is a sure-fire recipe for success, betting on the research is the safest method of investment for struggling companies.