I am a huge fan of raising R&D, helped push this from 2017-19, but still think there is a lamentable tendency to overstate its role in "driving" growth, which leaves out the other 89,787 factors that are relevant 1/ royalsociety.org/~/media/policy… 
I think it is a particularly marked tendency among non-economists: the longing for there to be one factor driving all the others. And such a cheap one to solve! Raise R&D by 1ppt of GDP, restore productivity growth (worth multiple ppts of GDP) 2/
I reckon the Soviet economy had a high R&D percentage too. Your basic institutions in the broadest, Douglass North sense of the term, are what matter above all, and not screwing up aggregate demand management - if you are really in the market for simple answers 3/
