R&D: a portfolio of financial options ?

Two financial innovations, the Economic Value Added theory and the Options theory, can reopen the dialogue between researchers who prepare future products, and bankers who protect the company and its shareholders and therefore promote today's or tomorrow's products to finance the future. The EVA which encourages short term profit at the cost of long term investment, threatens the allocation of research grants. However, seeing research as a portfolio of options, rather than a burden, allows researchers to demonstrate their value to the bankers. In the Options theory, uncertainty is a source of wealth. Also, analysing research results as options, favours research the future industrial applications of which are both the most haphazard and also the most promising.