There was one question in relation to the IBM assignment.

I'm interested in the decrease of expenditures year-over-year. How necessary is the first investment to later investment relative to valuation?

Topic Assignment Grading Course: Name Topic Yours Name Professor's Name [optional] University 1 Topic Choose three projects from the list and describe what the projects are and what resources they require. IBM has been working with many of existing projects so here, listing three project as follows, \"The world is our lab\": 1. Inspired Cognitive Environment: This is a featured project from IBM in which Company is working to create a room that can understand what is happening inside the room even it allows to talk, hear, and can see occupants i.e. an occupant can communication with room. This room will facilitate conductive research and help to make strategic decision by sharing the situation which challenging occupant. Therefore, this project included a research, a technical team, and equipments which require to work on this project. 2. Accelerating Disease Detection: In this featured project IBM research team collaborated with Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai so that to establish a labon-a-chip that will help physicians to detect diseases like; cancer before patients understand that they are sick and have cancer. In this project involved resources include; IBM research team and a team from Icahn School of Medicine. 3. AI and cognitive computing: In this project, IBM research team has been working to develop applications which will allow humans to use effective power of AI technologies in order to discover, analyse, and trackle world's most significant challenges i.e. to enable others to perform research in challenging problems which may belong to healthcare, or daily traffic. Resources include; IBM AI team. Can any of the projects that you selected be described as research collaborations? Why? I believe all the projects have significant research collaborations as follows, \"The world is our lab\": 2 Topic 1. Inspired Cognitive Environments has reflected research work where research team working to discover a room that can help in making strategic decisions. 2. Accelerating Disease Detection: This project is also required collaborated efforts of IBM research team and a team from medical domain (Icahn School of Medicine) that allow to identify the critical healthcare problems and then discover lab that can help to know disease before patient's realization. 3. AI and cognitive computing: IBM's research team is already working to explore AI technology help to develop devices or labs which can use in reducing the challenging problems. Can any of the projects that you selected be described as academic collaborations? Why? 'Accelerating Disease Detection' project can consider as important where academic collaborations (Icahn School of Medicine) is helping IBM to develop a lab for critical healthcare problem identification before patient's realization, \"The world is our lab\". Go back to the IBM front page, find \"Investor Relations\" at the bottom of the page. Go to IBM's most recent annual report. How much did IBM spend on research, development, and engineering in the most recent year? How did this compare with the previous year? I found IBM's Annual Report of FY-2015 in which Company invested total amount in Research, development and engineering (RD&E) was $5,247 million while it was $5,437 million from FY-2014 i.e. it has decreased 3.5% from FY-2014 to FY-2015. 3 Topic Overall RD&E expenses decreased due to the effects of currency (5 points), impact due to divested system that partially offset business by 4 points, increased base spending (4 points), and higher expenses in acquisitions (1 point), \"2015 IBM Annual Report\". 4 Topic References 2015 IBM Annual Report. Retrieved February 23, 2017 from https://www.ibm.com/annualreport/2015/assets/img/2016/02/IBM-Annual-Report2015.pdf The world is our lab. Retrieved February 23, 2017 from http://research.ibm.com/ 5