Deepening or delinking? Innovative capacity and global value chain participation in the ICT sectors
Rasmus Lema, Carlo Pietrobelli, Roberta Rabellotti & Antonio Vezzani
#2021-007
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 Classification: F23, D23, L22, L25, O10, O32, O38