TechSpace

German Title: Technologische Räume - Evolution, Potenziale und politische Implikationen

Description

Performance of innovation activities and public research is often measured by quantitative outcome indicators, such as patents or new products. It is frequently overlooked if these innovations are really new in terms of a new combination of knowledge or technologies. In particular, the discussion on the relevance of "cross innovation" or innovation at the interface of technologies or research fields showed the importance of the problem. However, there are no satisfactory indicators to measure these long-term aspects of innovation, which is especially necessary for the evaluation of innovation policies.

The project TechSpace focuses on three key aspects of innovation to fill this gap.

• First, it presents the concept of technological spaces as a new empirical approach to analyze long-term technology development. The project aims at developing a set of indicators to evaluate these developments, with a focus on radical innovation.
• Second, these indicators will be used to identify drivers of these developments (a particular focus will be on the role of policy).
• Third, on the basis of such path-dependent technology development, we will derive policy implications by analyzing the relevance and embeddedness of basic technologies as well as regional smart specialization strategies.

Within an innovation, regional, and evolutionary economic framework, the empirical methods are based on patent data, but they merely serve as the basis for new indicators on technology spaces to be developed and tested.

Partners

The project is conducted by researchers from the Centre for Regional and Innovation Economics at the University Bremen (CRIEExternal link), the Institute of Economic and Cultural Geography at the Leibnitz University Hannover (linkExternal link), and the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena (FSU Jena). It is coordinated by CRIE and runs from January 2018 until December 2020.

Team (Chair of Microeconomics – FSU Jena)

Prof. Dr. Uwe Cantner, PD Dr. Holger Graf, Stefano Basilico

Duration

2018-2021

Funding

TechSpace is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBFExternal link) within its funding priority on New Indicators for Research and Innovation.

Publications

• Basilico, Stefano and Holger Graf (2020), Bridging Technologies in the Regional Knowledge Space: Measurement and EvolutionExternal link, Jena Economic Research Papers, 2020-012.

Workshop

TechSpace Workshop: Advancing Indicators of Regional Structural Change
March 17 -19, 2021, Jena, Germany