Thales employs more than 20,000 researchers and engineers and invests 20% of its annual revenues in R&D. Some 3,000 staff are involved in pre-product Research & Technology (R&T) in a dozen countries. The Group also operates five research establishments in close proximity to world-class innovation ecosystems on the campuses of globally recognised academic research institutes (in France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Singapore and Canada). Collaborative, open research is one of the hallmarks of Thales’s approach to innovation. The company is involved in more than 200 long-term collaborative research projects, and has formed about 30 strategic research partnerships leading to the creation of joint laboratories with common research objectives and shared access to advanced facilities and talent.
Intellectual property protection and management is another key component of innovation. Thales currently holds the rights to 15,000 patents, and Group engineers and researchers filed more than 400 new patent applications in 2014. The rights to about 100 patents are jointly held by Thales and various public bodies, illustrating the Group’s commitment to cooperation with public research institutes.
* The Top 100 Global Innovators rankings honour the innovative capabilities of companies and research centres around the world, based on four key metrics relating to intellectual property activity: number of patents filed, success rate (patents granted versus patents filed), geographical penetration, and influence of the patents filed.