Pietro Moncada-Paternò-Castello

Can Fast Growing R&D-Intensive SMEs Affect the Economic Structure of the EU Economy?: A Projection to the Year 2020

The paper investigates how would sector composition and the magnitude of R&D investments in the EU differ in year 2020 compared to the past, if a selection of top R&D-investing SMEs were assumed to be on a fast growth track while the top R&D-investing large scale companies continued to grow as before. Background of this research objective is the emerging focus on SMEs — and in particular the fast growing among them — with regard to the “Europe 2020” policy strategy. The study relies on the sample of top R&D-investing firms as given by the latest available “EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard” editions, building from it an unbalanced panel. Scenarios were developed by distinguishing SMEs’ assumed growth paths vs. that of large scale companies. A linear prediction model has been used to compute the simulation. Overall, the study indicates that if one expects the (R&D-intensive) small firms to be a driving force for a substantial structural change in the EU economy, from being driven by rather medium-tech sectors towards a high-tech based economy, it requires either a significant longer time horizon of the assumed fast growth track than the simulated 10 years, or small firms’ growth figures which even exceed the assumed 30% annually (as in the most optimistic scenario). Neither case appears to be particularly realistic. Hence, we need more top R&D investors in Europe to further intensify their engagement in R&D (increasing volume and R&D intensity) as well as numerous small firms that start and/or significantly increase their existing R&D activities and thus seek to become large firms and (global) leading R&D investors. Accordingly, a broad R&D and innovation (policy) strategy is needed with policy interventions which also target well all these options; i.e. stimulating firm growth and R&D and innovation-intensity across firm-sized classes.

Does size or age of innovative firms affect their growth persistence? -Evidence from a panel of innovative Spanish firms-

This study examines serial correlation in employment, sales and innovative sales growth rates in a balanced panel of 3,300 Spanish firms over the years 2002-2009, obtained by matching different waves of the Spanish Encuesta sobre Innovacion en las Empresas, the Spanish innovation survey conducted annually by the Spanish National Statistics Institute (INE). The main objective is to verify whether the changes (increase/decrease) in these figures are persistent over time, whether such persistence (if any) differs between SMEs and larger firms, and if it is affected by a firms age. To do so, we adopted a semi-parametric quantile regression approach. This methodology is well suited to cases where outliers (high-growth firms) are the subject of investigation and/or when they have to be assumed as being very heterogeneous. Empirical results indicate that among those innovative firms experiencing high employment growth, the smaller and younger grow faster than larger firms, but the jobs they create are not persistent over time. However, while being smaller and younger helps growing more in terms of employment and sales, it is not an advantage when innovative sales growth is considered: in this case larger firms experience faster growth.

Projection of R&D-intensive enterprises' growth to the year 2020: Implications for EU policy?

The paper investigates how sector composition and the magnitude of RD i.e. stimulating firm growth and R&D and innovation-intensity across firm-sized classes.

The effect of innovative SMEs' growth to the structural renewal of the EU economy - A projection to the year 2020 –

The Policy Brief addresses the following question: To what extent the high-growth of current innovative R&D-intensive SMEs can drive the envisaged structural change of the EU economy towards high R&D intensive sectors? It aims to contribute to the debate about how to set the right priorities and find the most appropriate policy interventions to allow Europe to reach the 3% R&D intensity target and hence its growth and employment objectives. It first summarises stylised findings from the literature on the relevance of innovative companies for economic growth, then presents results from a recent JRC-IPTS study which go some way towards answering the question posed above, and concludes by outlining some of the contributions that enrich the policy debate.

Proceedings of CONCORD 2010: 2nd European Conference on Corporate R&D "An Engine for Growth, a Challenge for European Policy". Academic Forum - Summary Report

The European Commission collects and analyses policy relevant information on corporate RD with the first day constituting a forum for a more technical and academic discourse and the second devoted to the policy dimension of corporate R&D, based on the most policy relevant outcomes of the first day. This report, by providing a compilation of the indi-vidual reports of the Conference rapporteurs (members of the Scientific Committee of the Confer-ence), highlights the most important ideas arisen from the presentations in the course of the Aca-demic Forum of CONCORD 2010. It thus relies on the contribution of the members of the Scientific committee.