By François-Xavier Meunier, researcher at the Economics of Defence Chair - IHEDN
The Covid-19 crisis highlights the lack of national autonomy in the production of certain essential medical goods, as we have seen in the very short term with a shortage of masks, respirators and certain medicines. The same challenge exists for the production of new knowledge, which can, in the longer term, represent both a risk and an opportunity for a country's capacity for technological innovation. During the innovation process, dependencies and interdependencies develop between countries, and these are difficult to measure. They take the form of knowledge flows that build networks, the complexity of which depends in particular on the diversity of the players operating within them: universities, research centres, businesses, public authorities, etc. Understanding how knowledge is disseminated within these networks is essential if we are to understand a country's capacity for technological innovation.
In the defence sector, particular attention is paid to a country's relative position within innovation networks. In France, the strategic autonomy advocated by the State is partly based on this attention. A State's technological power is a central element of this strategic autonomy (Versailles et al., 2003). It consists not only of its ability to act alone, but also, in a perspective close to the work of Aron (1962), of its ability to impose its technological orientations on others by taking a central position within the innovation network. In other words, in terms of technology, a country's strategic autonomy depends on its ability to innovate alone and its ability to influence the innovation process in order to steer developments outside the country in a direction that suits it.
The aim here is to present an initial approach to understanding the technological dimension of strategic autonomy. This initial study is being conducted using GraphMyTech from patent data. Although unpatented innovation is common in this field, defence companies are filing more and more patents, especially the largest ones, which are the ones taken into account in this study. However, this can only be a first step, which will be enriched by other public data such as scientific publications, or more heterogeneous and confidential data from company databases or public authorities (e.g. DGA).
Using the same method as that presented by Lebert and Meunier (2017), it is possible to measure, on a national scale, this balance between autarky and interdependence in defence innovation. From a technological point of view, these measures provide a means of classifying countries according to their level of strategic autonomy.
The method we have chosen for this is based on a matrix analysis of technological knowledge flows based on patent citation data linking prior knowledge (cited patent) to subsequent knowledge (citing patent). Three indicators are applied to these matrices, each revealing scores enabling classification:
- Scores introversion’ reveal the strength of the interdependence between the territories that make up a country in technological innovation processes. They can be interpreted as a measure of the country's technological autarky.
- Scores extraversion »In addition, the "interdependence" section provides information on the level of interdependence between the country's territories and the rest of the world. This indicator is a good measure of the country's integration into the international innovation network. A country with a high extraversion score is in a position to influence defence technology developments on a global scale. because other countries need its technological output to innovate, and vice versa.
- The scores of «cohesion» combines the two previous scores; it constitutes a synthetic indicator of strategic autonomy in terms of technologies.
The construction of technology flow matrices is based on the use of four databases:
- PATSTAT (EPO, February 2018 version): contains information on patent citations and groups patents by «families», i.e. by unique inventions.
- REGPAT (OECD, February 2016 version): contains the address of the patent applicant and assigns them to NUTS (Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics) and TL (Territorial Level).
- COR&DIP (OECD and EC, 2015 version): contains the patent portfolios of the world's 2,000 most innovative groups (90% of global R&D expenditure).
- SIPRI Arms Industry Database (Version 2013): There are 61 «defence» groups that belong to both the COR&DIP and SIPRI databases. These 61 groups and their patent portfolios are used for the empirical analysis.
Although our sample of companies is not exhaustive by country, on a global scale they account for the majority of sales and R&D in the defence sector. Their study is therefore an interesting first step. Table 1 shows the main results obtained for the years 2010 to 2012 on the network of knowledge flows between territories within the European Patent Office. For the three indicators, the scores reveal the following hierarchies.
Table : Indicator results for the top ten countries
Cohesion summarises the two dimensions of strategic autonomy. It shows a leading quartet made up of the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom and France. At first glance, Germany's position in this hierarchy of powers is the most surprising. This position can be explained by its industrial capacity, which is generally higher than that of the other European countries, as well as its R&D spending compared with the other major industrialised countries (with the exception of Japan, whose effort is comparable), and by the nature of the sample studied. Indeed, this study focuses on the largest innovative companies in terms of R&D budget, which for Germany includes four companies, i.e. as many as for France. Although the R&D activities of these groups are not carried out exclusively in Germany, this gives the study a strong German bias. a priori a weighting similar to that of France. This initial analysis does not take into account the entire defence technological and industrial base (DTIB) of the countries studied, which would certainly change Germany's position.
This exploratory work on technology-based strategic autonomy is based on an original method for measuring interdependence between territories in defence innovation within the country and internationally. This method makes it possible to assess the two components of this strategic autonomy: the ability to innovate alone and the ability to influence technological trajectories on a global scale. Integrating other data, in particular that held by public authorities, would enrich the analysis and possibly enable the technological component of a country's strategic autonomy to be monitored. In addition, This type of analysis can be transposed to other fields and thus go well beyond the defence issue alone, becoming a tool for assessing the technological sovereignty of France or, more broadly, Europe. By providing details by technical field, by player or even by territory, this assessment can then be used as a basis for drawing up and auditing a public R&D policy.
Aron R. (1962), War and peace between nations, Calmann-Levy, Paris.
Lebert D., Meunier F.-X. (2017), Introverted or extroverted? Profiles of regional technological interconnectedness in Europe, 92nd Annual Conference of the Western Economic Association International, June, San Diego (CA).
Versailles D.W., Mérindol V., Cardot P. (2003), Research and technology, the key to power, Economica, Paris.
