Working Paper #2021-007
Deepening or delinking? Innovative capacity and global value chain participation in the ICT sectors
Innovation trajectories in global value chains can take highly
differentiated pathways. Firms and other organisations operating in a
sector in a given country may gain or lose innovative capacity over time
compared to their peers in other countries. In this paper we address the
question: do stylised trajectories emerge from the analysis of
countries' relative innovative capacity and global value chain
participation? We draw explorative insights from a cluster analysis of
45 countries on the subsectors of the information and communication
technology industry: hardware and software. Our analysis uncovers
remarkable differences across sectors and countries. We identify
different trajectories and discuss the sub-sectoral specificities which
contribute to explaining these differences. The association between the
strengthening of innovative capacity and deeper insertion in global
value chains applies to only a handful of countries and only in the
software subsector. These findings raise questions for future research
on innovation in global value chains.
- Keywords
-
- Global value chains
- Innovation capacity
- Innovation trajectories
- Hardware
- Software
- ICT
- JEL codes
-
- F23
- D23
- L22
- L25
- O10
- O32
- O38
Cite this as
APA 7th ed.Lema, R., Pietrobelli, C., Rabellotti, R., & Vezzani, A. (2021). Deepening or delinking? Innovative capacity and global value chain participation in the ICT sectors (UNU-MERIT Working Paper No. 2021-007). UNU-MERIT. https://unu-merit.nl/publications/working-papers/abstract/?id=8728