Publications
-
List item
Organization and geography of global R&D and innovation activities: insights from qualitative research on leading corporate R&D investors
This study examines the on-going structural changes in the international organisation of corporate R&D and innovative (RDI) activities. Insights are… Show more mainly drawn from interviews made to innovation representatives and managers of large R&D-investing companies in 2017 in the frame of the European Commission’s project – Industrial Research and Innovation Monitoring and Analysis –. The research intends to complement the quantitative evidence available in the project on the worldwide leading corporate R&D investors in order to better characterize the on-going fragmentation of R&D and innovation activities. The study suggests directions for mapping innovation value chains beyond research and inventive activities and carries out important conceptual and policy implications for the configurations and sustainability of innovation systems in Europe. Show less
-
List item
PDF A geography of corporate knowledge flows across world regions: evidence from patent citations of top R&D-investing firm
This exploratory study looks at the structural and geographical patterns of corporate knowledge flows from a regional perspective. The methodological… Show more approach combines the centrality indicators developed in the social network analysis (SNA) and complementary tools from the graphs theory to assess the betweenness centrality of regions (or poles) their ability to control knowledge flows within a network or to impact its cohesiveness and the relative contribution of individual firms (or layers) to the centrality of regions. The combination of the two approaches brings relevant insights on the way large R&D-driven firms organise their knowledge sourcing and generation across world regions. Show less
-
List item
PDF Assessing the innovation capability of EU companies in developing dual use technologies
This study proposes a framework to identify and analyse the European defence innovation ecosystem and to investigate the relevance of… Show more dual use inventions, extending previous empirical approaches. 63,714 defence inventions in the decade 2002-2012 were analysed by taking several dimensions into consideration: time, geography, technology, type of innovator. The main findings indicate an increasing trend of patented inventions covering a wide range of technological fields not only in the traditional defence areas, but also in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and in instruments for measurement and control. The innovations seem to be quite concentrated: the twenty largest patent holders (firms and government agencies) account for 40% of total defence inventions. The largest geographical source of innovations is the USA, but South Korea has increased significantly in recent years. Dual use innovations, i.e. military patents subsequently cited by a civilian invention, are identified using a novel method employing patent citations. The proportion of dual use inventions in the whole dataset is 41%, but the value has been decreasing in recent years and shows heterogeneity across technological sectors and geographical areas (the USA reports the highest share, 63.9%). Analysis of knowledge flows suggests significant heterogeneity in the share of intra-border innovations: the European defence innovations are largely cited by US inventions, especially when considering dual use cases. Show less
-
List item
"A Technology-Based Classification of Firms: Can We Learn Something Looking Beyond Industry Classifications?"; Entropy 2018, https://doi.org/10.3390/e20110887 (registering DOI) Volume 20, Issue 11
In this work we use clustering techniques to identify groups of firms competing in similar technological markets. Our clustering properly… Show more highlights technological similarities grouping together firms normally classified in different industrial sectors. Technological development leads to a continuous changing structure of industries and firms. For this reason, we propose a data driven approach to classify firms together allowing for fast adaptation of the classification to the changing technological landscape. In this respect we differentiate from previous taxonomic exercises of industries and innovation which are based on more general common features. In our empirical application, we use patent data as a proxy for the firms' capabilities of developing new solutions in different technological fields. On this basis, we extract what we define a Technologically Driven Classification (TDC). In order to validate the result of our exercise we use information theory to look at the amount of information explained by our clustering and the amount of information shared with an industrial classification. All-in-all, our approach provides a good grouping of firms on the basis of their technological capabilities and represents an attractive option to compare firms in the technological space and better characterise competition in technological markets. Show less
-
List item
PDF EU regions and the upgrading for the digital age
In this work we use patent data from the European patent office (EPO) to assess the capabilities of EU regions… Show more in developing digital technologies especially focusing on those that are more closely related to the digital transformation. More specifically, we measure ICT patents by considering those containing digital codes, as defined by the OECD. The penetration of digital technologies in the development of innovative products is instead captured by the co-occurrence of digital and non-digital codes within patent documents; we call these patents ICT-combining patents. Show less
-
List item
Heterogeneity of technology-specific R&D investments. Evidence from top R&D investors worldwide
In this work, we develop and apply a methodology to estimate technology-specific R&D investments at firm level. To do so,… Show more we combine R&D investment with patent data from the world top R&D investors worldwide and show that investment per patent varies greatly across technologies and across firms developing a given technology. We then use these results to assess the relationship between technology-specific R&D investments and a series of factors characterizing technological development. The estimation strategy makes use of a multilevel framework that allows modelling heterogeneity at the firm and sector level. In line with the literature on the sectoral systems of innovation, we find that sector specificities matter in determining R&D per patent investments, economies of scale in knowledge production, and the cost associated to technological specialization. Moreover, our results suggest that the persistent differences in R&D intensity across firms may be largely related to the technological choices they make. Firms' idiosyncrasies co-exist with significant differences across sectors in shaping knowledge production functions. Implications for policy and research are discussed accordingly. Show less
-
List item
PDF Advanced Manufacturing Activities of Top R&D investors: Geographical and Technological Patterns
This study builds upon and extends results that were obtained in the context of the Advanced Manufacturing Technologies for Competitiveness… Show more AMTEC project, in which the technological profiles of the patent portfolios of the EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard companies were constructed using patent-based analysis. The main questions addressed by this study were (1) In which countries are the most important inventors of AMTs and applicants for AMT-related patents located? (2) Is it possible to analyse internationalisation patterns and knowledge flows between world regions and countries? and (3) Are there any special patterns and clusters between AMT related technological fields and the five core KETs and, if so, which companies are responsible for the development of these technological applications? Show less
-
List item
PDF Estimating territorial business R&D expenditures using corporate R&D and patent data
This note describes a methodology to estimate territorial business R&D expenditures funded by the business sector, using R&D and patent… Show more data from top R&D investing companies. Since company data are available with a short delay, the aim is to provide timelines estimations for business R&D in anticipation of its publication by official statistics. The estimation is made for worldwide industrial R&D expenditures, breaking down figures for main world regions and focusing on the EU and its top member states. The industrial coverage comprises main innovative industries, focusing on manufacturing and knowledge intensive services. Show less
-
List item
PDF The Distribution of Technological Activities in Europe: A Regional Perspective
This study analyses the major patterns and trends in the spatial distribution of technological capacities in the EU area over… Show more the 1996-2011 period, adopting a regional perspective. More specifically, the study aims at: a) assessing the level of technological polarization in the EU area and its dynamics; b) highlighting major changes in the patterns of technological specialization of EU regions; c) identifying the technological trajectories that have been more effective, that is able to sustain long-term economic growth and facilitate catching-up processes of EU laggard regions. Show less
-
List item
Technological diffusion as a recombinant process
In this work we analyse patterns of technological development using patent applications at the United States Patent and Trademark Office… Show more (USPTO) over the 1973-2012 period. Our study focuses on the combinations of technological fields within patent documents and their evolution in time, which can be modelled as a diffusion process. By focusing on the combinatorial dimension of the process we obtain insights that complement those from counting patents. Our results show that the density of the technological knowledge network increased and that the majority of technological fields became more interconnected over time. We find that most technologies follow a similar diffusion path that can be modelled as a Logistic or Gompertz function, which can then be used to estimate the time to maturity defined as the year at which the diffusion process for a specific technology slows down. This allows us to identify a set of promising technologies which are expected to reach maturity in the next decade. Our contribution represents a first step in assessing the importance of diffusion and cross-fertilization in the development of new technologies, which could support the design of targeted and effective Research and Innovation and Industrial policies. Show less