FT.com / Comment - Advantages of the global village

"companies such as Amazon and Dell spend virtually nothing on research and development as a percentage of sales, yet they are among the most widely celebrated companies in the world. Why? Because both have been brilliant at supply-chain management and logistics, and are highly evolved distribution companies.

Other companies - such as IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Motorola and Sun Microsystems - see their R&D capabilities as a sustainable competitive advantage and continue to invest in the function. At Sun, we have outsourced our cafeteria, our human resources function, some of our manufacturing and distribution; we have not and will not outsource R&D because our control of that function is essential to our future."