Urenio Watch Watch: Intelligent Cities – Smart Cities – Innovation Ecosystems

What global executives think about technology and innovation

In a recent McKinsey Global Survey of Business Executives, IT and business executives agree that technological innovation, emerging economies, and offshore manufacturing are the three most important global business trends. But tech executives are more bullish about what innovation will contribute to their company’s profitability. Since they expect growth to come primarily through the improvement of current products, they emphasize new-product development less than business executives do. Continue reading

Innovation in Regional Systems

Bianca Potì and Roberto Basile developed a model to explain divergences in region/ country propensity to innovation through a system of innovation approach. They started from the idea that externalities and spillovers have positive effects on the innovative performance of firms, and focused on three types of interactions: (1) collaborative and network inter-firms relations; (2) sectoral-regional clusters; and (3) inter-institutional (industry-public research institutes) relations. Continue reading

EU R&D Figures, 2005

European Commission Press release (19 July 2005) point out that ‘The 2005 key figures show that EU R&D intensity is close to stagnation. Growth of R&D investment as a % of GDP has been slowing down since 2000 and only grew 0.2% between 2002 and 2003. Europe devotes a much lower share of its wealth to R&D than the US and Japan (1.93% of GDP in the EU in 2003, as compared to 2.59% in the US and 3.15% in Japan). Continue reading