Publications
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Industrial Innovation for Open Strategic Autonomy - leaving no one and no place behind
This working paper sets the scene and provides background information on 'Industrial Innovation for Open Strategic Autonomy”, the main focus… Show more of the 9th edition of the European Conference on Corporate R&D and Innovation (CONCORDi 2023), as well as introduces scientific contributions that will be presented at the conference. It thus aims to stimulate fruitful discussion between academia, experts and policy-makers at the conference, identifying potential policy initiatives and areas where additional research and evidence are needed. Show less
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PDF "Digital and green transitions: handling the economic and social challenges" (2023) Special Issue in Industry and Innovation. Volume 30, 2023 - Issue 7. September 2023
In an era of increasing global challenges, two paradigmatic shifts – the digital and green transitions – have gained traction… Show more due to their potential impacts on industrial ecosystems and societal inequalities. Termed the ‘twin transition’, these shifts underscore the synergies between technological advancements and environmental sustainability. Highlighting its importance in post-COVID-19 recovery, the special issue examines the twin transition’s potential to drive industrial innovation and affect social, economic, and geographical inequalities. The seven articles in this special issue explore the impact of the twin transition on corporate innovation strategies and investment, alongside the economic, social, and geographical implications. Key findings underscore the need for diversified technological investments, especially in AI, and enhanced digital infrastructures. Policy recommendations advocate for aiding firms lagging in digitalisation and developing region-specific innovation policies. The research sets a roadmap for future inquiries into the interplay of digital and green transition, broader economic impacts, and policy-driven strategies. Show less
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Regional incidence and persistence of high-growth firms: Testing ideas from the Entrepreneurial Ecosystems literature
Policy-makers and scholars often assume that a higher incidence of high-growth firms (HGFs) is synonymous with vibrant regional economic dynamics… Show more and that HGF shares are persistent over time as Entrepreneurial Ecosystems (EEs) have slowly-changing features. In this paper, we test these hypotheses deeply rooted in the EE literature. We draw upon Eurostat data for up to 20 countries over the period 2008-2020 and study HGF shares in NUTS-3 regions in Europe. Analysis of regional rankings yields the puzzling finding that the leading EEs in Europe, apparently, are in places such as southern Spain and southern Italy. These places would not usually be considered Europe’s foremost entrepreneurial hotspots. Additional results do not provide strong support for the hypothesis that more developed regions feature higher HGF shares. We do find evidence consistent with HGF shares displaying persistency over time. However, we show that more developed regions do not have higher persistence in their HGF shares and that the strength in persistence does not increase across the HGFs distribution, which does not support path dependency as the main mechanism behind the observed persistence. Overall, we call for a more nuanced interpretation of both regional HGF shares and the EEs literature. Show less
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PDF Walking the Green Line: Government Sponsored R&D and Clean Technologies
The study analyses whether government sponsored R&D induces the development of clean technologies with a high impact on subsequent technological… Show more development. The analysis uses information on USPTO patents granted between 2005 and 2015 and combines different methods to control for possible sorting of projects into public funding and for non-random (public) treatment. We also assess the distributional effect of government sponsored R&D. Results show that patents from public funded projects have a significantly higher impact and that this is particularly true for highly cited patents, thus supporting a role for technology-push policies in determining a clean technological transition. Show less
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PDF How do companies measure and report corporate sustainability? A comparison among the most innovative European companies
The field of measuring and reporting CS practices currently faces relevant challenges. First, although important steps have been taken towards… Show more transparency in reporting CS practices, there is still significant flexibility in terms of the international sustainability frameworks that guide the reporting, the key performance indicators (KPIs) that need to be included, and even the specific aspects that must be reported. Second, there is a wide range of CS metrics rooted in different methodologies and assumptions that still lack standardization and convergence. These two challenges make it difficult to compare companies and understand their evolution towards greater sustainability. Based on these challenges in measuring and reporting CS practices, this study has two objectives: (1) analysing companies’ CS reporting to determine the trends in terms of the terminology, EU regulations, international sustainability frameworks, ratings and indices, KPIs, and materiality approaches used, and (2) comparing the CS metrics of some of the most relevant rating agencies to identify their similarities and differences. To achieve these objectives, we collected data on the 250 EU companies ranked better in the 2021 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard. Overall, this work aims to contribute to advancing greater homogenisation in the measurement and reporting of CS. Show less
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PDF The 2022 EU Survey on Industrial R&D Investment Trends
This report presents the results of the 2022 survey of the top 1 000 EU companies by R&D investment in 2020,… Show more conducted between June and September 2022. The survey is intended to provide insights into the research and development activities of the R&D investors listed in the 2021 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard (Scoreboard 2021). The objective of this survey is to gather future expectations for R&D investment and gain first-hand information on barriers and drivers and the role of various activities that influence the level and direction of R&D investment. The survey addresses financing and collaboration, technology transfer and open innovation, and the effects of COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine. The response rate stood at 12%. The number of responses increased by 31.5% compared to the previous year, and the respondents accounted for over 26% of the R&D investment of the top 1 000 EU corporate investors in R&D. The results show a strong recovery in R&D investment after the COVID-19 pandemic, and the respondents expect this positive development to continue in 2022 and 2023. The main drivers of R&D investment are environmental sustainability and digitalisation. The respondents’ capital investment is largely driven by technologies to reduce emissions and to adapt to Industry 4.0. The survey thus confirms that innovative EU companies are actively helping to meet the targets set out in the European Green Deal and the green and digital transformation (the Twin Transition). Show less
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PDF The 2022 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard
The main objective of the EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard (the Scoreboard) is to benchmark the performance of EU innovation-driven… Show more industries against major global counterparts and to provide an R&D investment database that companies, investors and policymakers can use to compare individual company performances against the best global competitors in their sectors. The 2022 edition of the Scoreboard analyses the 2500 companies that invested the largest sums in R&D worldwide in 2021. These companies, with headquarters in 41 countries, and more than 900k subsidiaries all over the world, each invested over EUR 48.5 million in R&D in 2021. The total investment across all 2500 companies was EUR 1093.9 billion - an amount equivalent to 86% of the world’s business-funded R&D and passing the trillion Euro mark for the first time. The top 2500 includes 361 companies based in the EU, accounting for 17.6% of total R&D investment, 822 US companies (40.2%), 678 Chinese companies (17.9%), 233 Japanese companies (10.4%) and 406 from the rest of the world (RoW, 13.9% of R&D). The RoW group comprises companies from South Korea (53), Switzerland (55), UK (95), Taiwan (84) and companies based in a further 18 countries. At the global level, the Scoreboard shows the deepening of the global tech race in the four key sectors which account for more than three-quarters of the total Scoreboard R&D: ICT producers (22.6%), health industries (21.5%), ICT services (19.8%) and automotive (13.9%). R&D growth in the four key sectors was higher for US and Chinese than for EU Scoreboard companies. The extended sample of 1000 EU companies contains a substantial number of small- and medium-sized enterprises in health and ICT sectors with encouraging trends in 2021. This good base is an excellent enabler of the New European Innovation Agenda, which inter alia addresses firm creation and growth in emerging technologies and triggering spillovers between sectors. This report analyses companies' R&D, patents and other financial performance indicators over recent years, focusing on the comparative performance of EU companies and their global counterparts. A patent-based positioning of companies in green technologies (low-carbon technologies in energy-intensive industries and circular economy technologies) shows that EU and US Scoreboard companies lead in high-value patents, and the EU also leads in inventions relevant to circularity. Moreover, the present Scoreboard also analyses firm-level scores summarizing company performance in relevant UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). EU-based Scoreboard companies achieved the highest scores in most SDGs and showed progression across the board. From a sectoral perspective, Scoreboard companies operating in the automotive and chemical sectors achieved on average high SDG progression. The results of this report reveal challenges and opportunities for the EU as it seeks to improve its technology capabilities and reinvigorate its industrial base in the context of increasing global competition pressure and ongoing green and digital transformations. Show less
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Exploratory study understanding the SDG alignment along research activities and technological innovation of Scoreboard companies
This study work aims at improving the GLORIA project’s understanding of the alignment between private firms’ research, development & technological… Show more innovation (RD&TI) activities and SDGs. To accomplish such a goal, textual descriptions of single RD&TI records produced by the companies featured in the scoreboard will be analysed by means of different Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques and classified in accordance with potential SDG of interest. Specifically, patent descriptions, publication abstracts and summaries of research projects funded by the European commission via the H2020 Framework Programme are analysed (see chapter 2. Data Sources) and linked with potential SDGs of concern by means of keyword-based and Deep Learning textual classifiers. Show less
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PDF Top EU R&D investors in the global economy - Benchmarking technological capabilities in the health industry
This report analyses the health industry through the lens of the top 2,500 corporate R&D investors worldwide, coupling R&D and… Show more patent analysis to provide new evidence on the EU specificities with respect to other main economic areas. During the last 10 years R&D investments in the biotech sector have increased by a factor of 3.6, increasing its prominence in the health industry. However, biotech and pharma companies present similar technological portfolios, whit pharma companies owning more biotechnology patents. Focusing too much on the lack of EU biotech companies among top corporate R&D investors might overemphasize a potential gap with the US in the development of biotechnologies. In this work we identify a set of technologies related to immunology, immunotherapy, bioinformatics and combinatorial chemistry – Immuno+ technologies – and show that these are complex and increasingly pervasive. The gap with the US is large and a sense of urgency would help the EU jump into this new technological wave. The key question for EU policy makers is how to foster the overall development of the health and biotech innovation system in the EU. Understanding where, how and what type of research is performed in the EU compared to other economic areas is of great importance. This report provides insights that can support the ongoing revision of the general pharmaceutical legislation on medicines for human use. However, more evidence is needed to evaluate and implement the new healthcare industrial and innovation policies in the years to come. Disentangling the role played by large R&D investors in the EU innovation system and the interactions between private and public research activities seems to be particularly relevant as concerns the health industry. Show less
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The development of digital sustainability technologies by top R&D investors
The report offers a novel approach to identify patents associated with digital sustainability technologies, which combine components of digital technologies… Show more with technologies that are relevant for climate change mitigation or adaption. We propose an identification strategy based upon six search modules, which combine specialists’ opinion, keywords and classification-based approaches. We generate two datasets. For the first, we use PATSTAT 2019a to identify 319,243 patents associated with digital sustainability technologies. We use this dataset to evaluate the accuracy of the proposed strategy in finding technologies that combine both a digital and a sustainable aspect. We find an accuracy above 95.5% for all search modules implemented in the proposed strategy. For the second dataset, we implement the proposed strategy to update the results using PATSTAT 2021b. To make the results more comparable to the EU climate neutrality report 2021 edition, we focus on the period from 2016 to 2018 and filter priority patents using the IP5 strategy. We link the retrieved patents to R&D Scoreboard companies using the JRC-OECD COR&DIP© v.3 dataset. We identify for all R&D Scoreboard companies 325,508 patents in total, from which 5,057 are digital sustainability patents. Show less