Regional technological profiles and collaborations: An empirical analysis of joint patents and EU-funded projects

The aim of this paper is to determine the factors affecting technological collaborations among EU regions, focusing on the role of their technological profiles. We consider the population of EU NUTS2 regions and analyse the inter-regional collaborations in EPO patent applications and in EU projects in the Seventh Framework Programme in the period 2007–2013. We overcome the limitations related to the mono-dimensionality of technological proximity by explicitly considering the distinction between technological similarity and technological complementarity. We further distinguish between horizontal complementarity, related to the degree to which technologies are fruitfully combined in R&D, and vertical complementarity, the degree to which technology developers (leaders) are related to technology adopters (followers). To measure ‘horizontal’ technology complementarity, we develop an original dyad-level indicator based on the concept of technological relatedness. The empirical analysis shows that technological complementarity has a statistically significant effect on the number of collaborations between regions, even when controlling for the degree of similarity. While horizontal complementarity positively affects only collaborations in EU projects, vertical complementarity negatively affects both joint patents and EU projects. Notwithstanding the relevance of complementarity, technological similarity seems to have a larger impact on the intensity of inter-regional collaboration. We also find dissimilarities in the factors affecting joint patents and EU projects due to the inner differences in the nature of these two types of innovative collaborations. The results are robust to different specifications and to the use of different methodologies for measuring similarity and complementarity. Given the rising interest in promoting technological inter-regional collaborations in the EU (e.g. in the Smart Specialisation Strategy), this paper provides novel insights about the determinants of two very different forms of inter-regional collaborations in innovation: joint patents and EU projects.