Diego Sande (p)

Michael Korolev

We carried out an assessment of the impact of European regional innovation policies on the main indicators of business innovation in Andalusia. As a Convergence Objective Autonomous Community of the European Union, Andalusia benefited from a significant volume of resources between the 2007-2013 and 2014-2020 programming periods. The proposed analysis seeks to identify the impact of participation in this programme on the basis of the main microeconomic indicators available (projects, funds received, evolution of spending on research and development, innovation, patents, collaboration networks, turnover, etc.). This impact is broken down taking into account the sector, size of companies, location, etc. The results show an uneven impact depending on business characteristics and highlight the existence of a significant leakage of resources to other territories. These results will also allow recommendations to be made for the future implementation of research, development and innovation policies.

Pieter Stek (p), Marina Van Geenhuizen

Diego Sande

This research explores the global development of four patent-rich high-technology sectors from 1975-2019 in terms of cluster formation trends, innovation performance, agglomeration and inter-cluster knowledge networks. The descriptive and explanatory analysis is framed within the context of sector- and cluster life cycle theories. The pharmaceuticals and semiconductor sectors are considered mature, while the information technology and solar photovoltaics sectors move from the initial exploration phase to growth, and then to a mature development phase during the study period. The empirical results show that agglomeration and knowledge network factors have a strong influence on cluster innovation performance right before, during and soon after the high-growth phase of the sectors. In the mature sectors, more recent periods show a positive influence of knowledge network factors and a negative influence of scale-bases agglomeration in the pharmaceuticals sector. The semiconductor sector shows a positive influence of network connectivity, which may partly explain the sector’s high spatial concentration in clusters. These observations can be explained by long-term trends in these respective sectors.