Creation of high technologies: comparative analysis of countries

Abstract

RESEARCH PURPOSE. High technology creation, as a rule, requires national support systems although the flow of the created value in an international level is unexplored. The national innovation systems are becoming globalized; thus the distinct process of creation, dissemination and implementation of high technologies is becoming globally fragmented and therefore the added value distribution within the global value chain (GVC) should be investigated. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH. The brief and extensive academic literature review dedicated to high technology creation is introduced, although the empirical investigation is narrowed to the scientific research and development sector, depicted as M72 by NACE statistical classification. Thus empirical research design is based on the sectoral level data, considering M72 sector as the main economic activity for high technology creation. The data for the comparative analysis of countries is retrieved from the 2014 world input–output data (WIOD) which enables to exclude double counting of added value inherent for the convenient import and export data and holds information of intermediate and final consumption of added value within a country and between different countries. The descriptive statistic based on WIOD data is provided and further prescriptive statistics for the data interpretation is conducted. While developing the predictive models, the number of investigated countries varies while the data for M72 sector is not available for all countries provided in WIOD and including to the model basic science and technology indicators as independent variables, retrieved from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development database, the number of countries reduced additionally, also due to the data shortage. FINDINGS. The key result is the provided methodology for the positioning of the countries evaluating the involvement in the upstream and downstream GVC processes, hereby introducing new indicators that may have an impact on the sector’s performance. ORIGINALITY/VALUE/PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS. The evaluation of high technologies creation performance would provide insights into the international management and innovation policies, and the matrix concept for the positioning countries by the pattern of involvement to the GVCs could be applied to other sectors.