The scientific and technological cross-space: Is technological diversification driven by scientific endogenous capacity?

Abstract

The principle of relatedness allows us to explore the likelihood that territories diversify their current technological portfolios based on the global co-occurrence patterns of technologies. Countries that excel at developing semiconductors should develop mobile phones because both technologies require similar endogenous capacities, including scientific knowledge. However, thus far, studies have been mostly limited to the knowledge common base assumption and have not questioned enough whether different scientific endogenous capacities may be behind similar diversification performances. To address this question, we introduce the concept of scientific and technological cross-density, which we define as the average proximity of a new potential technology to a country's scientific and technological portfolio. To conceptualize and measure the effect that scientific and technological cross-density may have on technological diversification, we applied a two-stage methodology to a sample of 182 countries during the 1988–2014 period. First, we build a network, the science and technology cross-space, (sci-tech cross-space), which relates knowledge and technologies based on co-occurrence values. Second, we estimate the effect of scientific-technological cross-density and technological density on technological diversification at the country level. We find that the more a new technology is related to a country's scientific portfolio, the greater its entry probability; additionally, the effect of technological density on technological diversification is greater than the effect of scientific and technological density.