Significant efforts are being made to improve research and innovation (R&D) capacities across the EU in order to increase economic competitiveness. However, based on past experience, the most promising innovative players are often concentrated in already performing geographic areas. EU15 countries perform better than subsequent Member States in terms of R&D performance, and differences in innovation capacity within Member States are significant. Meanwhile, social R&D spending was pushed back by the 2008 financial crisis, and the current epidemic is likely to have a negative impact. In addition, local economies across Europe show significant differences in their ability to use existing R&D performance to increase the income of their populations. All of these processes are reflected in the continuing inequalities of innovation between EU regions.

This is why the priority and coordination of knowledge-based cooperation between regions is at the heart of the EU strategy to overcome innovation divisions.

Horizon’s allocation to Europe. 595.5 billion in the EU budget period 2021-2027 is no coincidence., which aims to improve scientific and technological excellence, strengthens the European Research Area (ERA) and uses it to achieve social objectives and increase economic competitiveness. Such collaborations can be expected to increase R&D performance as knowledge production and innovation increasingly depend on the combination of knowledge components belonging to different actors. Knowledge is increasingly important to ensure a sustainable competitive advantage and economic growth, but its production is increasingly developed thanks to the collaboration of actors with knowledge in a limited field.

Unity and geographic proximity facilitate knowledge exchange by imposing integration costs on collaborative participants. Knowledge sharing often takes place in dense and highly concentrated local networks. However, on a larger scale, it also implies that the resources needed to generate new knowledge can be spread across multiple distributions and geographic locations. Thus, although interregional links are less frequent than local ones, interregional collaborations infuse new ideas and knowledge into the local economy, thus contributing to innovation in the region. The actors who engage in such relationships provide a diversity of knowledge. In addition, the collaboration has the potential to bring the lagging R&D areas and the wider EU13 Member States closer to the center of European R&D activity, facilitating knowledge sharing between regions and ultimately contributing to the development of R&D between regions. To minimize capacity differences.

It is therefore important to identify the obstacles and opportunities for collaboration in space R&D and to better understand these networks. For example, in the previous Horizon Europe version of the EU FP program, cooperation between member countries was closer in 2003-2017, while EU13 countries were involved in the development of less complex technologies. Although scientific publications which represent the knowledge base of basic research are somewhat less affected by regional boundaries, collaboration is generally between geographically close actors and more complex scientific knowledge is concentrated in parts of Europe. North and West.

Elite structures can be found in scientific publication and patent collaborations, as high-quality scientists and fields with financial resources are more likely to collaborate with each other.

Etc Slow integration Nevertheless, the ERC has a dense and hierarchical pole and is largely fragmented like the national innovation systems of European R&D. In Hungary’s opinion, this is also a thing Previous search In terms of the quality of the patents created, engaging in the joint production of knowledge is an advantage for the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, but at the same time further widens the technological development gap between the regions that can engage successfully in such collaborations.

A KRDK ANET laboratoryAt the beginning of 2010, we were interested in the factors influencing the intensity of cooperation of inventors in the creation of patents in European regions (NUTS3, Hungary, districts), and what are the characteristics of repeated cooperation? It was before 2010. Pioneers. Such collaborations require special attention because the general experience gained from previous collaborations will improve the effectiveness of collaborations, increase the effectiveness of partners and help transform complex knowledge. At the same time, these collaborations can reduce the quality of innovative results that emerge by creating closed groups and reinforce fragmentation.

• According to our results, on the one hand, the role of geographical proximity has not yet disappeared because nearby places cooperate with greater intensity.
• On the other hand, this also applies to similar technical portfolios between regions, as this type of similarity facilitates the combination of knowledge components, but also carries the risk of less serious innovations.
• In addition, cooperation between areas with close links with common third regions is generally more intense.
• Finally, interestingly, discovery between regions is only part of the recurrence of recurrences. In their case, the role of geographical proximity is even more pronounced, which is further reinforced by technical similarity and joint cooperation partner region, but only if there is geographical proximity.

Figure 1 shows the structure of the collaborative network and the groups and communities that can be found on a map. According to Figure 1, most European countries have an excellent innovation center in which collaborations operate, and these centers integrate with the innovation systems of other countries. (For example, Spain, Sweden, Finland, Italy, Hungary and Romania). There is more than one center in Poland, France and especially Germany, where local centers also stand out. Most of these methods are also intended for continuous communication (Figure 2): one center is in Sweden, Finland or Italy, while two centers are in France (Paris and Lyon) and several related centers are in Germany.

The two networks disintegrate into well-defined communities in space, some of which link different countries. So, for example, the community that includes the States of Penelope, France and Spain (Figure 3). Communities often include neighboring Switzerland and Austria or Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. At the same time, England, Hungary and Croatia form a networked community with the Scandinavian countries. We see innovation collaborations creating a distinct community in Italy. It is interesting to note that Germany is organized into two large communities which do not follow the East-West divide correctly, as the southern part of the country forms a cooperative society, especially with the eastern part.

He proposes to rethink innovation collaborations after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Repeated collaborations do not follow a global pattern (Figure 4). In some cases, communities follow national borders (eg France and Italy) and groups of countries (eg Belgium and the Netherlands or Scandinavian countries). For others, we find spatially close areas that span several countries (eg UK). In Germany, we see small-scale displaced communities. Overall, when looking at ongoing collaborations, collaborative communities are divided into smaller groups. This suggests that collaborations between geographically close areas are more likely to recur.

These observations give a vague picture of the formation of the ERC in the case of patents. Models of innovation cooperation between regions show continuous integration, which systematically follows the borders of the Member States. However, integrating repetitive collaborations into a single PDP remains an even greater challenge. In this regard, it should be noted that the network of patent collaborations connecting European regions is particularly powerful, and many new research, with us, can be found to have repeated links in various European knowledge production networks. . These results raise the question of why efforts to build greater collaborative knowledge in the European space framework will not be pursued in future collaborations.

The article-based study is in English Here Available.

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