Publications
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PDF Smart Specialisation, seizing new industrial opportunities
This study offers a novel analytical approach to inform the regional search for new industrial opportunities, as promoted by Smart… Show more Specialisation within the EU Cohesion policy context. The analysis departs from the challenges of practicing Smart Specialisation and its entrepreneurial discovery process in a dynamic perspective. It argues that the adoption of a dynamic approach to identify new opportunities implies mapping regional business and innovation assets as well as, assessing their position within the global technological and industrial landscape. The report brings a case study of the Lombardy region business environment, spurring from the S3 Lab initiative (in collaboration with Baden-Württemberg, Catalonia and Lapland), together with a comparative analysis focusing on technological development. The empirical study combines patent data from OECD REGPAT and territorial proprietary micro-data from Lombardy region on firm creation in emerging industries (EI) – new industrial sectors or existing sectors evolving into new industries (European Cluster Observatory). These industries represent a priority area for Lombardy's innovation-led development strategy. The initial observations confirm the importance of such industries in the region; they represent more than one-third of employment, almost a half of the regional value-added and feature together the majority of innovative start-ups, suggesting the relevance of the regional strategic development choices. Also, in terms of productive advantages, Lombardy ranks high in some key EI. The mapping of technological competences through patent indicators measuring specialisation, diversification and the ability to specialise in fast-growing and niche fields gives relevant insights on the technological potential of the region, providing further guidance for better targeted interventions. Show less
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R&D and Innovation across Global Value Chains: Insights for EU Territorial Innovation Policy
Firms organise innovation activities across a wider range of geographically dispersed and specialized units, as compared to previous decades. Moreover… Show more corporate innovation processes are broken up into ever finer stages and tasks at the global scale. The global dispersion of R&D and innovation activities occurs at a higher pace and goes hand in hand with a stronger regional polarization. Yet, corporate R&D remains a domestic activity, although functional and industry-specific patterns can be observed. The increased internationalisation of R&D and innovation activities does not imply the hollowing-out of domestic ones. Foreign innovation activities may actually support domestic increases in innovation. The internal and external connections of national and regional systems matter for their innovation performance. The quality of the regional learning and innovation systems is important to attract "relevant activities or segments" of the GVC. On the other hand, better connecting regions to the global innovation network is important for local growth and employment. The extent to which firms co-locate production and innovation activities depends on industry, product and process-specificities. Evidence is needed on how R&D and innovation activities are sliced and diced across GVCs, on how these global corporate dynamics interact with national and regional innovation systems and on how they impact on local growth and employment. Show less
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PDF World Corporate Top R&D Investors: Industrial Property Strategies in the Digital Economy
The speed, scale and scope of the digital transformation make it hard to fully apprehend the breadth and depth of… Show more the changes brought about by this new technological paradigm. Such a difficult exercise is nevertheless fundamental for evidence-based policies aiming at addressing the challenges and leveraging the opportunities that going digital may offer, while making the digital transformation societally enhancing and inclusive. The present report constitutes an effort in this respect and looks at the innovation-related investment and activities performed by market leaders worldwide to identify their technological trajectories. It shines a new light on the digital transformation and on the strategies pursued by top innovators worldwide to generate knowledge and to appropriate the returns from their knowledge-based investment through industrial property (IP) rights. Special attention is devoted to uncovering the extent to which information and communication technologies and activities are diffusing and have been adopted by actors operating in other technological and economic domains. To access the EC-JRC/OECD COR&DIP© database, v.1. 2017 (raw data provided in flat files), please fill in the on-line form at: Access to COR&DIP© Show less
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Concerns about the consequences of patenting on scientometric research. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 68(9), 2293-2295.
Our concerns about the practice of patenting scientometric techniques began with an electronic notification alerting one of us to a… Show more patent titled "Scientometric Methods for Identifying Emerging Technologies" (Abercrombie, Schlicher, & Sheldon, 2015).1, 2 This came to our attention after we had already embarked on a research program to apply scientometric methods for the identification of emerging technologies here at the JRC. We were at a loss how to respond. This seemed to run counter to the spirit of openness and public science that has characterized the bibliometric community from the start. We got in contact with former colleagues Ben Martin and Daniele Rotolo, authors of a bibliometric study entitled "What is an emerging technology?" (together with Diana Hicks, published in Research Policy, 2015). Even though we were experts and professionals in innovation studies (although not all specifically on IP), we were not entirely sure of the patent's wider implications. Could it threaten to shut down our research? Could it rule out any research funding or consultancy opportunities? What ensued was a series of fruitful exchanges between us authors, with some of us not sure how to interpret this patent, and others disappointed (even outraged) that the patent had been granted on grounds of "non-obviousness." Opinions were divided whether a patent like this could have any impact at all. It took us a long time to grasp the (possible) implications of this patent, but other researchers in other circumstances might not have been as fortunate. Show less
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PDF Significant Business R&D Growth in 2016
This document shows first estimates on territorial R&D funded by the business sector, based on recent R&D and patent data… Show more from a representative sample of worldwide companies from the EU R&D Scoreboard. R&D funded by the business sector increased in the EU by 3.2%, below the 5.7% global rate and the US R&D growth (4%). As in the previous year, the worldwide growth of industrial R&D in 2016 was driven by ICT related industries. Among the three EU largest countries in terms of industrial R&D investment, Germany showed higher growth rates than France and the UK. However, only France recorded a better performance for 2016 compared to the previous year. Show less
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PDF Scientific Publication Activity of Scoreboard Companies
This report examines the extent to which firms included in the 2014 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard are involved in… Show more publication activity. The Scoreboard includes 2,500 firms most active in terms of R&D expenditure. These firms account for about 90% of the global private R&D expenditure. On the basis of a novel methodological approach to collect publication data from the Web of Science (WoS) for all Scoreboard firms and their subsidiaries (about 570,000 subsidiaries), the report examines the Scoreboard firms' publication activity for the 2011-2015 period. The main findings are summarised below: • Scoreboard firms (and their subsidiaries) contributed to 314,411 publications (about 3% of the global publication output as reported in WoS); • About 84% of Scoreboard firms contributed to at least one publication (with an average about of 137 publications per firm); the distribution of number of publications by firm is, however, highly skewed; • There is a relatively strong correlation between firms' R&D expenditure and their number of publications, but firms that score well in the rank by R&D expenditure (i.e. Scoreboard) do not necessarily score well in the rank by number of publications; • 58% of Scoreboard firms' publications involve at least one academic institution; • About 12% of Scoreboard firms' articles are within the top 10% most cited articles, and about 45% of Scoreboard firms contributed to at least one article that is within the top 10% most cited articles. Show less
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Sources of Knowledge Used by Entrepreneurial Firms in the European High-Tech Sector
The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between an entrepreneur's experience and education and his/her reliance on… Show more alternative sources of knowledge for exploring new business opportunities. The extant literature that is at the crossroads between sources of knowledge and the experiential and intellectual base of an entrepreneur (i.e., dimensions of his/her human capital) suggests that it is through experience and through education that an entrepreneur obtains knowledge. Using information on a sample of high-tech manufacturing firms across 10 European countries, we explore heterogeneities in the influence of experience, age, and education of the firm's primary founder on the perceived importance of (i.e., use of) alternative sources of knowledge. We find that the association of these characteristics differs significantly across sources of knowledge, and across European regions. Education is positively related to the importance of knowledge from research institutes and internal know-how, while age is negatively related to the importance of research institutes and positively related to publications and conferences. On the one hand, in South/East European countries, the importance of internal know-how is positively associated with age and education, but negatively associated with experience. On the other hand, the characteristics of primary founders of North/West European firms are more linked to the importance of the participation to funded research programmes. This source of knowledge is related positively with age and education and negatively with experience Show less
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Firm market valuation and intellectual property assets
This paper investigates the relationship between the innovative activity of the top corporate R&D investors worldwide and their valuation on… Show more the financial markets. The empirical analysis is based on a sample of more than 1,500 top publicly listed Multinational Corporations (MNCs) performing a considerable share of the business investment in R&D worldwide. The main dataset covers their intellectual properties, patents and trademarks, filed between 2005 and 2012. The paper extends upon the recent literature on the links between IP assets and the firms' financial valuation. It assesses the potential premium resulting from the interactive use of different IPRs. More importantly, it differentiates the extent to which IPRs confer a market premium to companies with respect to their industrial competitors from the extent to which within-company variations hold the key to a market premium. Finally confirming the relevance of corporate mixes of IP assets, important industrial specificities are found in the premiums granted to both individual and two-ways strategies. Show less
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Manufacturing the future: is the manufacturing sector a driver of R&D, exports and productivity growth?
Many industrialized countries in Europe and North America have experienced a steady decline in the manufacturing sector over the last… Show more few decades. Amid growing concerns that outsourcing and offshoring have destabilized European economies, policymakers have suggested that a large manufacturing sector can: i) boost R&D, ii) encourage exporting, and iii) raise productivity. We examine these claims. Non-parametric plots and regressions show a robust positive association between the manufacturing sector and Business R&D expenditures (BERD), while the relationship between manufacturing and exports or productivity is more elusive. Finally, we explore whether a manufacturing sector target of 20% of value-added will help reach a BERD target of 3% of GDP. Show less
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The short-run effect of Knowledge intensive greenfield FDI on new domestic entry
Existing evidence on the impact of foreign direct investment on domestic economies remains ambiguous. Positive technology spillovers of foreign investment… Show more may be outweighed by negative crowding out effect due to increased competition. In this paper, we employ a unique country/sector-level data set to investigate the impact of what is considered the ‘best' type of foreign investment —greenfield knowledge intensive FDI— on domestic entry. Our results suggest that, in the short run, this type of FDI is positively related to the entry rate in the host country, if the domestic sector is either dynamic, or highly R&D intensive. These sectors may be respectively characterized by lower entry costs, which encourage a ‘trial-and-error' learning business approach, and by a higher level of absorptive capacity which increases the chance of technology transfer. Show less