Key Enabling Technologies – is the Czech Republic catching up the leading countries in innovation and technology?

Abstract

Abstract The topic of this contribution is a comparison of the research & development related to the “key enabling technologies” (KETs) in the Czech Republic and the European Union as a whole with selected non-European economies. A further aim of this article is an appraisal of the effect of the European strategies and action programmes which have been implemented since the turn of the decade and which target the lagging of EU in innovations in critical technologies. We use the publication and the patent activities as a proxy to assess the intensity of the KETs oriented R&D. The Asian countries Japan, South Korea and the fast growing China have the highest fraction of KETs oriented publications and patents in their national output. The Chinese State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) recorded in 2015 a half of the world patent applications related to KETs. Measured by their share of publications, the Asian countries exhibit a significantly more intensive R&D in the majority of KETs. Whereas the patent activity of the Asian countries grows the number of patent applications in the EU stagnates in the recent years and EU visibly lags behind the Asian competitors. The EU R&D policies and strategies aimed at the promotion of KET and the financial support does not seem exhibiting visible effects. In the Czech republic KETs became an organic component of the National Research and Innovation Strategy for the intelligent specialisation (National RIS3 strategy) and a number of targeted public financing programmes support KETs related projects. The situation in the Czech Republic has been evolving in a positive way between 2008 and 2016. Both the number of publications and patent applications related to KETs has been increasing and the growth dynamics approaches the Asian countries. The number of publications per research worker in the Czech Republic is on par with the EU. Due to a stronger growth in recent years of the number of patent applications in comparison to EU the Czech republic reached the EU average per researcher and the fraction of the KETs related applications surpasses the EU average and even some developed countries.