Research and Development

To remain competitive products have to evolve and improve. This doesn't happen on its own - money needs to spent on Research and Development to ensure it. One of the problems with R and D is that there is often a very long payback period for the money. The money has to be spent at the earliest stage of the product life cycle, but the product often takes a long time to develop. Once developed the market then often takes time to grow. The return from the money spent on R and D can often be a long time coming.

This is particularly true with aerospace industries, including ballooning. This is because technical developments take a long time and the products are often highly complex requiring several developments to take place before the full product can be developed.