Capability accumulation patterns across Economic, Innovation, and Knowledge-production activities

The evolution of economic and innovation systems at the national scale is shaped by a complex dynamics related to the multi-layer network connecting countries to the activities in which they are proficient. Each layer represents a different domain, related to the production of knowledge and goods: scientific research, technology innovation, and production. Nestedness, a footprint of a complex dynamics, emerges across activities (i.e. network layers). The competitiveness of countries correlates unambiguously with their diversification in most layers. Instead, in the scientific domain we observe an increasingly modular structure, in which the most developed nations become relatively less active in the less advanced scientific fields, where emerging countries acquire prominence. This is in line with a capability-based view of the evolution of economic systems, but with a slight twist. While the accumulation of know-how and skills is a fundamental step towards scientific development, resource constraints force countries to acquire competitiveness in the more complex research fields at the expense of more basic, albeit less visible (or more crowded) ones. The emergence of a relatively specialized basket of capabilities implies a balance between the need to diversify and the need to allocate resources efficiently. Collaborative patterns between developed nations reduce the necessity to be competitive in the less sophisticated research fields, freeing resources for the more complex ones.

PATELLI Aurelio;  NAPOLITANO Lorenzo;  CIMINI Giulio;  PUGLIESE Emanuele;  GABRIELLI Andrea; 

2023-10-09

NATURE PORTFOLIO

JRC132854

2045-2322 (online),   

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-29979-x,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC132854,   

10.1038/s41598-023-29979-x (online),