Publications
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PDF The Specialisation of EU Regions in Fast Growing and Key Enabling Technologies
In the context of the Europe 2020 objective of establishing in the EU a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy, European… Show more regions have been called to design and implement national and regional 'Research and Innovation Strategies for Smart Specialisation' (RIS3). The rationale behind the concept of smart specialisation is that, in a context of global competition for talent and resources, most regions can only acquire a real competitive edge by finding niches or by mainstreaming new technologies into traditional industries and exploiting their ‘smart' regional potential. Although the most promising way for a region to promote its knowledge-based growth is to diversify into technologies, products and services that are closely related to existing dominant technologies and the regional skills base, the European Commission puts special emphasis on a set of technologies labelled as 'Key Enabling Technologies' (KETs). Despite the great emphasis on KETs, there is only very limited evidence on the capability of EU regions to specialise in these fields and there are no studies directly investigating the actual impact of these technologies on regional innovation and economic growth. This report aims at filling these gaps by: i) looking at the relationship between KETs and 'Fast Growing Technologies' (FGTs); ii) providing empirical evidence on the EU regional specialisation in KETs and FGTs; iii) relating technological specialisation to regional innovation and economic growth. In particular, the report aims at answering these questions: 1) Which technologies have emerged as the fastest growing ones in the recent decades? 2) Is there a relationship between fast growing technologies and KETs? 3) Which regions are specialised in FGTs and KETs? 4) Are there convergence and polarization phenomena observable in the evolution of EU regions' innovative activities in fast growing technologies and KETs? 5) Do EU regions specialized in fastest growing technological fields and key enabling technologies exhibit higher innovation and economic performances? The main results of the report can be summarised as follows. First, only a small share of KETs are also fast growing technologies, although the degree of overlapping between KETs and FGTs varies substantially across different KETs fields. Second, while KETs are concentrated in Central Europe, FGTs prevail in Scandinavian countries and the UK. Third, while there is evidence of some regional convergence in KETs and, to a less extent, in FGTs, spatial correlation increases over time, showing that diffusion often occurs across contiguous regions. Finally, the results of the estimations of the effects of FGTs and KETs on innovation (patents) and economic (GDP per capita) growth show that only specialisation in KETs directly affects economic growth, while specialisation in FGTs has an impact on growth only indirectly, that is through its impact on regions' innovation performances. Overall, these results confirm the pervasive and enabling role of KETs pointing to the importance for European regions to target these technologies as part of their RIS3 strategies. Show less
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PDF The capability of the EU R&D Scoreboard companies to develop Advanced Manufacturing Technologies
The aim of this study is to provide empirical evidence at the firm level about the role of Advanced Manufacturing… Show more Technologies (AMTs) and Key Enabling Technologies (KETS) and the impact of innovation in these technologies on the efficiency and productivity of companies across various industrial sectors using data from the EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard (the Scoreboard). The principal aim of this report is to describe the profile of the patent portfolios of the companies in the Scoreboard, to link their innovation output to input in terms of R&D expenditures and to draw useful conclusions about the policy implications at the level of the EU Member States. The data source for the input is the 2013 edition of the Scoreboard and the outputs and patent applications and further patent-related indicators at the transnational level from the Worldwide Patent Statistical Database (PATSTAT). The focus is on the firm-level data and the basic questions addressed are as follows: What firms are responsible for most of the patent filings in AMTs and KETs and which are the main industrial sectors responsible for patent filings within the two technology fields? Where have the R&D activities taken place? Which countries and which sectors are most actively inventing AMTs and KETs? Among companies in the Scoreboard there is a correlation between R&D expenditure and investment in innovation and innovation output, as measured by KET- and AMT-related transnational patent filings. Show less
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Key Enabling Technologies and Smart Specialization Strategies. European Regional Evidence from Patent Data
The paper aims at investigating whether Key Enabling Technologies (KETs) can have a role in facilitating regional Smart Specialization Strategies… Show more (S3). Drawing on the economic geography approach to S3, we formulate some hypotheses about the impact that KETs-related knowledge can have on the construction of new regional technological advantages (RTAs). By crossing regional data on patent applications, in KETs-mapped classes of the International Patent Classification (IPC), with a number of regional economic indicators, we test these hypotheses on a panel of 26 European countries over the period 1980-2010. KETs show a positive impact on the construction of new RTAs, pointing to a new 'enabling' role for them. KETs also exert a negative moderating role on the RTAs impact of the density of related pre-existing technologies, pointing to the KETs capacity of making the latter less binding in pursuing S3. Overall, the net-impact of KETs is positive, pointing to a new case for plugging KETs in the S3 policy tool-box. Show less