Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings (Wiley Investment Classics)

by Philip A. Fisher

“What are you doing that your competitors aren't doing yet?”

But in the meanwhile let us see what an alert management has done to take advantage of technological change to develop the type of upward sales curve that I stated was the first requisite of an outstanding investment.

does mean that a company with research centered around each of these divisions, like a cluster of trees each growing additional branches from its own trunk, will usually do much better than a company working on a number of unrelated new products which, if successful, will land it in several new industries unrelated to its existing business.

Does the company now recognize that in time it will almost certainly have grown up to the potential of its present market and that to continue to grow it may have to develop further new markets at some future time? It

From this, conclusions are drawn both as to the importance of a company's research effort in relation to competition and the amount of research per share of stock that the investor is getting in a particular company.

One reason for this is that companies vary enormously in what they include or exclude as research and development expense.

Consequently, the number or prestige of research workers in one company may be overshadowed by the effectiveness with which they are being helped to work as a team in another.

It is no simple task for management to bring about this close relationship between research, production, and sales.

how much in dollar sales or net profits has been contributed to a company by the results of its research organization during a particular span, such as the prior ten years.