A rough assessment of the importance of engineering activities that are not covered by R&D expenditure, as collected by the OECD, can be derived from Figure . Among the services supplied to clients there are two groups: technical counselling and the development of software. These tasks are not classified as R&D. However, they contribute to product innovation and comprise activities in the case of counselling necessary to initiate engineering based on the final specifications of a client’s procurement contract. The development of software comprises minor adjustments of programmes to clients’ permanently changing needs as part of after-sales services.
