Deepening or delinking? Innovative capacity and global value chain participation in the ICT sectors

Rasmus Lema, Carlo Pietrobelli, Roberta Rabellotti and Antonio Vezzani ()

No 2021-007, MERIT Working Papers from United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT)

Abstract: Innovation trajectories in global value chains can take highly differentiated pathways. Firms and other organisations operating in a sector in a given country may gain or lose innovative capacity over time compared to their peers in other countries. In this paper we address the question: do stylised trajectories emerge from the analysis of countries' relative innovative capacity and global value chain participation? We draw explorative insights from a cluster analysis of 45 countries on the subsectors of the information and communication technology industry: hardware and software. Our analysis uncovers remarkable differences across sectors and countries. We identify different trajectories and discuss the sub-sectoral specificities which contribute to explaining these differences. The association between the strengthening of innovative capacity and deeper insertion in global value chains applies to only a handful of countries and only in the software subsector. These findings raise questions for future research on innovation in global value chains.

Keywords: Global value chains; Innovation capacity; Innovation trajectories; Hardware; Software; ICT (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D23 F23 L22 L25 O10 O32 O38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-03-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ict, nep-ino, nep-int and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:unm:unumer:2021007

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