The impact of the six European Key Enabling Technologies (KETs) on regional knowledge creation

Colin Wessendorf, Alexander Kopka and Dirk Fornahl ()

No 2127, Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography (PEEG) from Utrecht University, Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Group Economic Geography

Abstract: The European Commission summarized six young General Purpose Technologies (GPTs) under the label of European Key Enabling Technologies (KETs) in 2009. GPTs are broad, pervasive and widely diffused technologies that enable knowledge creation and economic growth. This study analyzes to what extent the KETs’ structural relevance within their regional knowledge bases leads to regional knowledge creation. Additionally, we analyze whether the structural relevance and the regional knowledge presence in KETs interact with regards to regional knowledge creation. The ‘structure’ of a regional knowledge base describes the relation of all knowledge being present within a given region, while ‘structural relevance’ describes a technology’s impact on the structure. Our analysis focuses on the time period from 1986-2015 and includes Germany’s 141 Labor Market Regions (LMRs) as regional spatial units. Our database consists of patent data from which we map the structure of the regional knowledge bases, by constructing technological spaces based on technology co-occurrences on patents. The structural relevance is operationalized with the help of Social Network Analysis (SNA), by measuring the changes that the removal of KETs causes in the structure of technological spaces. Our findings indicate that KETs enable knowledge creation in different ways. They show that the effects of KETs on regional knowledge creation activities are KET-specific. Furthermore, it proves essential to distinguish between ‘knowledge presence’ and ‘structural knowledge relevance’ when addressing the innovation-spawning function of KETs. Thus, for both further research and for policy-making, it is a fundamental requirement to address KET-driven knowledge creation in particular KET-specific ways.

Keywords: General purpose technologies; GPT; key enabling technologies; KET; regional innovation; regional knowledge base; knowledge space; technological space; technological integration; German regions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O31 O33 R11 R58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-09, Revised 2021-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-eur, nep-geo, nep-ino, nep-isf, nep-knm, nep-sbm, nep-tid and nep-ure
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:egu:wpaper:2127

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