Publications
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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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PDF European R&D networks: A snapshot from the 7th EU Framework Programme
Recent empirical studies have investigated the territorial impact of Europe's research policies, in particular the contribution of the European Framework… Show more Programmes to the integration of a European Research Area. This paper deepens the analysis on the integration and participation of peripheral regions, by focusing on the differences in intensity and determinants of inter-regional collaborations across three groups of collaborations. We consider collaborations among more developed regions, between more and less developed regions, and among less developed regions. Building on the recent spatial interaction literature, this paper investigates the effects of physical, institutional, social and technological proximity on the intensity of inter-regional research collaboration across heterogenous European regions. We find that the impact of disparities in human capital and technological proximity on regional R&D cooperation is relevant and differs across subgroups of collaborations. Moreover, despite the efforts of integrating marginal actors, peripheral regions have lower rates of collaborations. Show less
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PDF 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
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PDF The 2017 EU Survey on Industrial R&D Investment Trends
The EU R&D Survey is a yearly survey amongst the top 1000 EU-based R&D investing companies from the R&D Scoreboard.… Show more The 151 participating companies in this report declared a total R&D investment from their own resources of €53.9 billion in 2016, or more than one-quarter of the total R&D investment by the 1000 companies of the 2016 EU Scoreboard. The companies that participated in the EU Survey on Industrial R&D Investment Trends expect R&D investment to increase by an average of 4.7% in the two years 2017 and 2018, with the highest growth expectations in the ‘Automobile and Other Transport' and ‘Health' sectors groups. Last year's expected growth was 1.4%. This year's expectations are the highest since 2007. If we compare only those companies that participated in the last three editions of the survey, the growth trend remains clear, with considerably higher growth expected in this year's edition (around 4.0%) than in the last two editions (around 2.5%). Participating firms expect their R&D investments within the EU to increase by 3.5% p.a., while significant increases are expected in the US (+15.1%), China (+20.2%) and India (+22.1%). The proportion of R&D performed within the EU is expected to decrease slightly from 76.0% to 73.4% and has been around three-quarters throughout the EU Survey editions since 2006. Quality and availability of researchers and macroeconomic and political stability are the factors that are rated most often as (highly) attractive by firms performing R&D in the EU only. If we look at firms that perform R&D in the US, we see that these firms value proximity to technology poles and access to markets much more highly than firms that do not perform R&D in the US. Firms performing R&D in China or India value low labour costs and proximity to suppliers much more than firms that do not perform R&D in China or India. Access to markets, macroeconomic stability and quality of personnel are most often rated as the most attractive factors by firms only producing in the EU. Low employment protection is considered least important. Firms with production activities in the US mainly value quality of personnel and access to markets as important factors for deciding on where to locate production. Around 80% of the total R&D investment made by the companies surveyed is spent in the later stages of the development process, namely applied and development activities. By contrast, ‘Basic research' accounts for only about one-tenth of all R&D investment, but also has the lowest concentration level[1] of all types of R&D, which indicates that many firms consider maintaining a level of 'Basic research' important. The largest EU R&D investors are true global players, with the US, Germany, China and France being the main locations for R&D activities. One out of three companies performs R&D in each of the four main economic areas. At the same time, the historical location decision remains an important factor for locating R&D activities: 87% of the respondents mentioned the companies' headquarters location as the country where the highest proportion of R&D is currently being performed, which indicates that the internationalisation and offshoring of R&D activities does not necessarily lead to the disappearance of the home site. This may also be because of the capital intensive investments that have been made initially at the original location. Quality and availability of researchers are factors that companies value the most for the attractiveness of an R&D location, while labour costs are the least important factor. However, low labour costs are rated as much more important by firms that perform R&D outside the EU than by firms that perform R&D only inside the EU. Together with proximity to technology poles, these are the factors that global firms perceive as much more important. Show less
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PDF 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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PDF Persistent heterogeneity of R&D intensities within sectors: Evidence and policy implications
Do firms in the same sector converge towards the same R&D intensities? Previous research has often assumed this to be… Show more true. A closer examination, using microdata from the EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard for the years 2000-2015, shows a large amount of heterogeneity in R&D intensities among firms in the same sector, and that this heterogeneity persists over time. Statistical tests of convergence show that the variation in R&D intensities does not decrease over time (i.e. no s-convergence), although firms with an R&D intensity below the industry average do seem to catch up with the leaders (i.e. evidence of ß-convergence). Overall, firms in the same industry do not converge to a common R&D intensity. Policy implications are discussed. Show less
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PDF Design, innovation and performance in European firms
This paper provides some new theoretical speculations and empirical evidence on the relationship between design, innovation and economic performance at… Show more the firm level. We posit that design investments may provide firms with a higher capacity of introducing product/process innovations, but that the ensuing economic performance is rather associated to the role of design within the firm. Moreover, once controlled for the firm's non-technological innovativeness and other knowledge-production inputs, the role of design does also relate to the introduction of innovative products and/or processes. We provide a systematic empirical test for these arguments on a sample of more than 12,000 European firms from the last EC Innobarometer survey. The econometric estimates are consistent with our expectations. However, while a higher innovativeness is also associated with a non-systematic resort to design, a higher innovation-based performance is coupled with an increasingly more central role of design, providing this is at least non-occasional. Innovations do actually look "design-led" overall, but innovating successfully apparently requires the firm to retain such a driver central to its business model. Show less