Research and development is the secret sauce that flows through the veins of every great company whether it is involved in technology, manufacturing, retail, financial services, healthcare or mining.

For the purposes of this column, I want to focus on the R&D expenditure of four companies with strong Australian connections – Atlassian, Mesoblast, Seeing Machines and Xero. Apart from having high levels of R&D expenses relative to revenue, these companies are all losing money.