Technological Sovereignty in a Time of Radical Technological Change

The presentation is focused on technological sovereignty in times of radical technological change. The world is now in a phase of radical innovation and change, which can be laid out in the following three aspects. The first is the slowdown of productivity growth. We steadily do harder in developing and improving technologies that have been at the basis of technological and economic development over the past 50–70 years. The second is the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We need to switch to technologies that are at the basis of sustainable development and to develop and improve them. Thirdly, it is reinforced by new geopolitics. More and more, we are facing context conditions that impair an economically powerful approach toward productivity growth slowdown and sustainable development goals. Also, we have made three empirics on key technologies. Empirics 1: Comparative advantages and disadvantages of selected countries in individual Key technologies areas (mean values for 2016–2018). Empiric 2: Mean value of transnational patent applications in key technology areas for selected countries and regions 2000*2002 and 2016–2018. Empirics 3: Mean value of publications in key technology areas for selected countries and regions 2000–2002 and 2017–2019. Moreover, we introduced a gap model to show the technological gap between two countries when they are at different knowledge levels. At last, we talked about technological sovereignty, which can be obtained via mastery or availability through in-house production or procurement via international trade, and the risks it may face. We listed several cases of industrial policies to care for technological sovereignty.