I'd caution using R&D investment as a metric. Historically, it seems the huge game changers (Google, Apple, Facebook, etc.) came from motivated individuals and not corporate research labs. Microsoft's early and enormous investments did not help them catch/contribute to the search/social/tablet/mobile wave which generated much of the value in the tech economy the past decade.
The massive catalog of Bell Labs innovations came from a heavily-regulated monopoly, not a half-forgotten research arm of a software or advertising company whose mission can best be summarized as "Hire smart people so the competition doesn't get them."
Why the Bell Labs approach worked so well while most such heavily-subsidized and centralized research efforts fail is something I don't entirely understand. It could be because their charter was centered on the improvement of telecommunications in general. In the twentieth century, that covered endless acres of fertile intellectual ground. To extend the cliche', there was a lot of low-hanging fruit on the physics trees, and once it was picked, that was it for Bell Labs.
This is an important point. There are times when confidence in your future enables a longer term investment horizon. And from that good things may often follow. But neither that confidence nor the good things may be enough to keep any social/economic position in perpetuity.
