The Role of Relatedness and Unrelatedness for the Geography of Technological Breakthroughs in Europe

Ron Boschma (), Ernest Miguelez, Rosina Moreno and Diego B. Ocampo-Corrales

Economic Geography, 2023, vol. 99, issue 2, 117-139

Abstract: This article proposes a framework to study how the existing knowledge portfolio of regional economies affects the emergence and occurrence of breakthrough technologies. The study discusses the relevance of cognitive distance between the technology of a breakthrough invention and the existing technological base in their geographic vicinity. Theoretically, it introduces the idea that both relatedness and unrelatedness between the technologies in breakthrough inventions and the regional portfolio of technologies can positively influence the appearance of these breakthroughs, but especially relatedness. Empirically, it investigates a sample of 277 NUTS2 regions in Europe in the period 1981 to 2010 and reveals that, by far, most combinations breakthrough inventions make are between related technologies: almost no breakthrough patent combines unrelated technologies only. Regressions show that the occurrence of breakthrough patents in a technology in a region is positively affected by the local stock of technologies that are related to such technology, but such an effect for the local stock of unrelated technologies is not found. However, the region’s ability to enter new breakthrough inventions in a technology relies on the combination of knowledge that is both related and unrelated to such technology.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00130095.2022.2134005 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: The Role of Relatedness and Unrelatedness for the Geography of Technological Breakthroughs in Europe (2022)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:recgxx:v:99:y:2023:i:2:p:117-139

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/recg20

DOI: 10.1080/00130095.2022.2134005

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Geography is currently edited by James Murphy

More articles in Economic Geography from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().