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Higher country taxes on noxious manufacturing emissions lead to substantial increases in firms' R&D spending. The R&D response is entirely driven by those high-pollution firms most affected by emissions taxes. Pollution taxes increase the marginal value of R&D spending in polluting firms, even when this spending does not lead to new innovation. Pollution taxes have the strongest effect on R&D investment in sectors in which new invention is difficult to appropriate and outside knowledge is easier to acquire, suggesting an important reason dirty firms invest in R&D is to expand their capacity to absorb external knowledge and technical know-how. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study empirically investigates the causal relationship between research and development (R&D) expenditure and innovation in Greece, during the period 1981–2009. It uses time series analysis, the theoretical background of the endogenous knowledge-based growth theories and the annual number of patent applications to the European Patent Organization as proxy of innovation activity. The Johansen method is applied to examine the possibility of co-integration. The results confirm the presence of a long-run relationship between R&D expenditure and innovation. The total and private R&D expenditure appear to have a positive effect on total and business innovation. In addition, the public R&D expenditure has a positive influence on business and total innovation, which indicates the existence of significant externalities of public sector research. The long-run elasticity of innovation with respect to R&D expenditure is estimated to be, on average, 1.9. Implications for public policies and related practices are formulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the factors influencing the Chinese manufacturing industry's innovation and industrial performance utilizing a panel data approach on a sample of Chinese manufacturing enterprises over the period of 2008-2013. The industries were grouped according to related sectors into five groups, a general group was also created which included the whole data sample. The study found that research and development (R&D) expenditure positively influenced the growth of product innovation and industrial performance, but not necessarily knowledge innovation and export performance. Also, expenditure on new product development had a positive impact on both innovation and industrial performance. The growth of patent application was discovered to be influenced by an R&D project and foreign patent license. Finally, the number of enterprises and firm size (i.e. number of employees) contributed positively to the industrial output performance. The findings suggest that industrial R&D and new product development influences the success of product innovation and sales performance. The study recommends that the government should set up policies that will stimulate industrial R&D, while supporting technology transfers from foreign partners. Most importantly, government policies on the development of the industry should be addressed on a sectorial level and not a 'one-size-fit-all' type of policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Promoting rural entrepreneurship provides solutions for depopulation and economic development. This paper studies the phenomenon of rural entrepreneurial activity in Spain, where the depopulation of territories has become a serious problem. Using regional panel data for the period 2007–2018, the study examines whether factors such as the unemployment rate, GDP per capita, economic growth, bank credit, road infrastructure, R&D investment and the level of human capital are related to the propensity to undertake entrepreneurship in the rural environment. On the one hand, rural entrepreneurship is based on market opportunities, not conditioned by the level of regional unemployment. On the other hand, rural entrepreneurs find greater opportunities for entrepreneurship when they are in an environment characterised by investment in R&D and available credit. However, professionals with a higher level of education find the rural environment less attractive for entrepreneurship than do professionals with secondary education. This work enriches our knowledge of the factors that encourage rural entrepreneurship in Spain and invites public authorities to reflect on the economic policies of employment, education, innovation and the promotion of financing that revitalise the rural environment. • Exists a negative relationship between unemployment and rural entrepreneurship. • Bank financing is essential for the development of rural entrepreneurship. • Entrepreneurs take more opportunities to start its projects in the regions where the invests are high enough in innovation and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the economic value of both embodied technological change and Research and Development (R&D) investment as proxies for the inputs of innovative activities conducted by Vietnamese firms. Our main focus is on the profitability of young innovative companies (YICs), private innovative companies (PICs), and small and young companies (SYCs). In particular, we test whether YICs could prove successful in fostering economic development through their technological change activities. Results show that (a) although YICs are more R&D intensive and innovative than PICs and SYCs, in general they do not produce equivalent performance; however those specific YICs focusing on technological change potentially outperform their counterparts, and (b) PICs are more capable than the other types of firms in translating their innovative effort to higher profitability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In today's internationally interdependent economy, under the fasttracking speed of technological change, measuring the research and development (R&D) productivity performance has been rekindled with the recent rise of spending by the Central Public Sector Enterprises in India, including Maharatna and Navaratna enterprises (with the Maharatna and the Navaratna status companies receive greater functional freedom based on few parameters set by the Department of Public Enterprises) on R&D in their conduct of democracy-imbued and innovation-led sustainable and smart growth. With the help of eight decision variables in a multi-objective best-practice framework, this study measured the ultimate effectiveness ratings of the thirty enterprises for the past three years. The findings markedly show that though the enterprises are becoming highly technology-intensive, their efficiency gain and exposure in productivity strength are not encouraging, except the Maharatna and the Navaratna enterprises, and many of them are geared on the same trajectory to enhance corporate strength by aggressive R&D spending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UNFCCC has stated that energy policies and measures to address climate change should be cost-effective to ensure global benefits at the lowest possible cost. To mitigate the bulk of carbon emission from the electricity sector, a large market penetration of renewable energy technologies with as low cost as possible is a key research topic. The energy-related R&D policy in Japan aims to achieve a green economy. In our study, based on this context, we demonstrated how to optimize the timing of public R&D investment within the framework of a bottom-up partial equilibrium model. The developed optimization model represents the Japanese electricity sector and minimizes the total system cost subject to an accumulated carbon emission constraint. Our main research focus is the role of R&D activity, especially in the innovation stage of renewable technologies. We employ a two-factor learning curve and quantify the impact of the learning effect on the dynamic diffusion of major renewable technologies. The study shows a dynamic technology transition in the Japanese electricity sector and the optimized R&D investment schedule for each renewable technology. With the first-best energy policy, an R&D budget of more than 2000 million USD would be allocated to PV in 2050, which corresponds to 45% of the energy-related Japanese R&D budget in 2050. Because some have criticized the uncertainty problems with dynamic simulations and learning models, supplemental sensitivity analyses are included. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the influence of intra-product specialisation on the innovation ability of the high-technology industry in China. To achieve this research goal, we use the generalised method of moments (GMM) with a dynamic panel data model in our empirical research. Total factor productivity (TFP) and its decomposition variables are used to measure the innovation ability. The Malmquist index is employed to calculate TFP and its decomposition variables, namely, technology progress, technical efficiency and scale efficiency. Previous studies show that intra-product specialisation can raise TFP, but our empirical results reveal that the impact of the intra-product specialisation on the TFP is uncertain: it decreases TFP in the initial period but increases it in the lag period. Results also indicate that an increase in the proportion of state-owned property rights exerts a positive influence on TFP and the change in pure technical efficiency. Technical efficiency is greatly influenced by intra-product specialisation, whereas intra-product specialisation exerts a slight influence on technological progress. The capital investment in research and development (R&D) has a positive effect on TFP, and the contribution rate of R&D labour input to TFP is relatively low. The main conclusion is that China need to improve the degree of intra-product specialisation, accelerate the evolution of industry technical standards and reduce the coordination cost of intra-product specialisation to enhance the innovation ability of the high-technology industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across the world, large firms show a greater propensity to undertake innovative activity. Large firms are more active in R&D activities, technology in-licensing, employing qualified manpower, organizational and marketing practices. In India too, bulk of industrial R&D investment comes from large firms. Analyzing a panel dataset of 610 large manufacturing firms having higher propensity to undertake R&D activities over a span of 6 years (2009-2014), the paper tries to identify the determinants of R&D investment in large manufacturing firms in India. The result shows that the large manufacturing firms who are younger in age, highly engaged in import and export activities and more profitable have higher propensity to undertake R&D activities and investment. The result could provide policymakers a handle to create a space for targeted initiatives for the large manufacturing firms in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the statistical classification of economic activities is not able to adequately display companies' R&D expenditures, the aim of this paper is to create a concordance list between industry sectors and technologies, enabling us to report the business R&D expenditures not only by industries but also by technology fields. To construct the concordance, we match data on R&D expenditures with patent data at the micro-level, i.e. at the level of companies and patent applicants, respectively. In a further step the business R&D expenditures are aggregated at the level of technology fields. This concordance table also allows us to provide patent statistics at the level of industries. The patent data for the matching were extracted from the 'EPO Worldwide Patent Statistical Database' (PATSTAT). The data on German business R&D expenditures are provided by the SV Wissenschaftsstatistik. The two data sources are matched by applying a string matching algorithm based on the distance between two text strings. The matching covers 44% of all German patent applicants and 83% of all patent filings at the EPO and the German Patent and Trademark Office in 2009. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding technology evolution through periodic landscaping is an important stage of strategic planning in R&D management. In fields like that of healthcare, where initial R&D investment is huge and good medical products serve patients better, activities of periodic landscaping become crucial for planning. Approximately 5% of the world's population has hearing disabilities. Current hearing aid products meet less than 10% of the global needs. Patent data and classifications on cochlear implants from 1977-2010 show the technology evolution in the area of such an implant. We attempt to highlight emergence and disappearance of patent classes over a period of time indicating changes in growth of cochlear implant technologies. Using network analysis technique we explore and capture the technology evolution in patent classes by showing what emerged or disappeared over time. Dominant classes are identified. The sporadic influence of university research in cochlear implants is also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates the impact of network strategies on innovation strategies carried out in 2011 by 44 top R&D spending bio-pharmaceutical companies. Gathering patent and accounting data, we built the business network of joint development activities making use of social network analysis (SNA). Our findings show that each network strategy is related to different innovation strategies, confirming that social network analysis is an effective instrument for explaining why firms enter into R&D agreements with partners and the linkage of such collaborations with the overall innovation strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the combined role of innovation support policies and firm's own innovative activities on the performance of Chinese small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in high-tech sectors. By distinguishing two components of innovative activities-research and development (R&D) investments and embedded innovative capacity-the paper develops and tests an integrative moderated moderation model. The results suggest that in Chinese high-tech SMEs innovation-support policies positively moderate the relationship between R&D investments and performance, but this positive effect diminishes when there are higher levels of embedded innovative capacity. These results highlight that the relationship between government innovation policies and a firm's own R&D investments is not only reciprocal but also more complex than the one so far analyzed in the literature. The results show in particular that the effects of innovation-support policies on R&D investments is not as neat as it seems, because of the internal balance within the firm between investment in R&D and other sources of innovation. Therefore, although innovation support policies have been found to help Chinese SMEs in high-tech sectors benefit from their R&D investments, these policies are particularly effective only when R&D investments are significantly driving firms' innovative activities. This highlights the relevance of both government support and a firm's own efforts in the competitive modernization of Chinese SMEs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various aspects of tax incentives, including research and development and technological innovation activities. It notes that the lack of competitiveness of at the business fabric and the fundamental role that they play in increasing productivity. It focuses on the ordination tax law and the delimitation of the concept of research and development. It examines international consensus on the concept of research and development for tax purposes.

Public sectors are under increasing pressure to provide better services and improve their efficiency in order to boost economic growth and social welfare. The promotion of R&D and innovation has proved to be a key determinant of economic performance of countries. However, little is known about the effect of publicly funded R&D activities on the performance and efficiency of public sectors. A better understanding behind such relationship is crucial, particularly in present times of public budget constraints. Accordingly, the article measures the public sector performance and efficiency of European countries by the construction of composite indicators. Moreover, it explores and tests the role of publicly funded R&D on public sector performance (using multivariate techniques and econometric analyses) and efficiency (by means of a non- parametric approach). Results indicate that publicly funded R&D should be considered a dimension of public sector performance, particularly when complementarities between private and public R&D emerge, but that it also plays a role on its efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a simple model of firm and consumer behavior. We formulate a sub-market entry game, where boundedly rational firms decide on investing in R&D for inventing new products that will appeal to targeted groups of consumers. The success depends on the amount of resources available for the project as well as on the firm's familiarity with market characteristics. Successful innovation feeds back into the firm size and (potentially into) market knowledge and increases the future R&D productivity. A new product decreases the market-shares of incumbents. However, this business stealing effect is asymmetric across incumbent population. We identify the section of parameter space where firms have an incentive to diversify horizontally. In this section, the model results in rich industrial dynamics. Firm size heterogeneity emerges endogenously in the model. Equilibrium firm size distributions are heavy tailed and skewed to the right. The heaviness of the tail depends on submarket specificity of firm's market knowledge. This relationship is non-monotonic, emphasizing two different effects of innovation on industrial dynamics (positive feedback and asymmetric business stealing). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a simple model with interdependent utilities, we study how social networks influence individual voluntary contributions to the provision of a public good. Departing from the standard model of public good provision, we assume that an agent's utility has two terms: ( a) 'ego'-utility derived from the agent's consumption of public and private goods, and ( b) a social utility which is the sum of utility spillovers from other agents with whom the agent has social relationships. We establish conditions for the existence of a unique interior Nash equilibrium and describe the equilibrium in terms of network characteristics. We show that social network always has a positive effect on the provision of the public good. We also find that, in networks with 'small world'-like modular structures, 'bridging' ties connecting distant parts of social network play an important role inducing an agent's contribution to public good. Assumptions and results of the model are discussed in relation to the role of social capital in community-level development projects and to the effect of innovation networks on firms' R&D investments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information and communication technologies (ICT) play an important role by contributing to rapid technological progress and productivity growth. The ICT sector represents 4.8% of the European economy. It generates 25% of total business expenditure in Research and Development (R&D), and investments in ICT account for 50% of all European productivity growth. It is therefore obvious that ICT lies at the heart of research and innovation globally. The European Union considers that ICT have a catalytic impact in three key areas: productivity and innovation, by facilitating creativity and management; modernisation of public services, such as health, education and transport; and advances in science and technology, by supporting cooperation and access to information. Horizon 2020 is the European Union framework programme for research and innovation for 2014-2020. EU investments in ICT increased by about 25% under Horizon 2020 compared to the previous EU framework programme for research, FP7. This EU investment supports the whole chain from basic research to innovation that can deliver new business breakthroughs, often on the basis of emerging technologies. In Horizon 2020, ICT-related topics can be found in all priorities and programmes. The overall structure of the Work Programme for Information and Communication Technologies 2016-2017 is very similar to the one of 2014-2015, however, a few changes were made, namely: Activities aiming at supporting innovative SMEs of the ICT sector through the dedicated SME instrument are grouped together with similar activities addressing other scientific and technical fields in a single call of the 'Innovation in SMEs' part of Horizon 2020; 'Cross-cutting activities' combining contributions from the 'Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies' priority and 'Societal Challenges' are also grouped together in a specific part of Horizon 2020. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this work is to investigate the university level determinants of academic spin-off ( ASO) firm creation in Italy. We are interested in particular in the relationship between university funding and the university propensity to create spin-offs, and test the effect of public and third-party funds on this tendency. We estimate the effect of several variables for the characteristics of the university and the context. In contrast to our expectations, results indicate that third-party funding does not exert an effect on the propensity of the university to generate ASO firms. Similarly, and in contrast to what the literature suggests, scientific productivity, context innovativeness and patenting experience also do not have a positive and significant effect on the propensity to generate spin-offs. We find that ASO creation is influenced by the amount of public income, by past experience in creating spin-offs and by the presence of a technology transfer office. This work contributes to our understanding of the differences between Italy and the Anglo- Saxon countries in relation to the phenomenon of ASO creation and has some important implications for policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – This study aims to investigate whether research and development (R & D) expenditures drive future innovation in the chemical industry. Design/methodology/approach – This study examines the relation between R & D expenditures for the period of 2000-2002 and the innovation effect measured by the Malmquist Productivity Index (MPI) for the period of 2003-2005. Under the MPI, the innovation effect is measured as the “shift” in a firm’s production frontier between two periods (2003-2005). Findings – Results indicate that there is a significant and positive relation between R & D expenditures and future innovation among chemical firms. Originality/value – This study should be of interest to financial accounting policy makers, R & D-intensive companies and investors. To policy makers, they may consider the possibility of permitting R & D-intensive companies to recognize R & D expenditures as assets. In other words, R & D-intensive companies can capitalize and amortize their R & D expenditures, as R & D expenditures can bring them future economic benefits. To R & D-intensive companies, the results may encourage them to keep up their R & D activities. Moreover, this study can increase individual investors’ confidence in investing companies with high-level R & D activities in an R & D-intense industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate how corporate governance influences R&D across 13 emerging markets. We find that superior corporate governance increases corporate R&D spending. These results suggest that corporate governance may influence management's discretion to avoid risky innovative projects. We also find that the link between firm-level governance and corporate R&D is stronger in countries with weaker country-level governance. These results suggest substitutability between firm and country governance in generating innovation activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Software as a Service (SaaS) has been one of the fastest-growing delivery models in the software industry. The industry's trade press often considers economies of scale as the main benefit of SaaS firms, because information technology management and the associated resources are centralized at the SaaS vendors. However, centralized information technology management also requires the associated cost of expanding the firm's IT infrastructure to serve more customers. Intuitively, it is not necessary that the former effect must dominate the latter. Using public firm-level data from Compustat, this study attempts to analyze the economies of scale of SaaS firms relative to their traditional counterparts by using the stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) approach. Our empirical findings suggest SaaS firms have smaller economies of scale than traditional software firms. By utilizing the technical efficiency score obtained from SFA, we further examine the effects of R&D expense and advertising expense on technical efficiency. The analysis suggests that R&D expense, not the advertising expense, could be the cause of smaller economies of scale at SaaS firms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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The system research, development and innovation (RDI) existing in Romania is not able to ensure the promotion of industrial development, due to its vulnerability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovation and new model development have been paramount in the U. S. automotive industry. The industry has invested around $16-18 billion annually to launch new models and improve existing ones in response to incessant evolution of consumer preferences, competitive pressures, and changes in safety and emission regulations. Although these investments have significantly reduced cycle time and increased efficiency (e.g., through platform communization), it still costs around $1 billion to develop and launch a new model from scratch. Therefore, the strategic focus in the U. S. automotive industry is rapidly shifting away from manufacturing efficiency to product development and innovation as firms engage in an 'arms race' to develop innovative new products ahead of the competition. The outcome of this new focus manifests itself in the total development time for a new platform vehicle, which is expected to drop from roughly four years in 1998 to two years in 2014. As development cycles continue to shorten, competition in the industry intensifies, and a new insight is needed to better understand how increased competition can affect the gains from innovations. The need for research to fill this gap is especially critical as executives continue to grow more cynical about returns offered by increases in research and development ( R& D) expenditures and see no statistically significant relationship between R& D expenditures and firm performance. This study attempts to address this gap by adopting a coevolutionary perspective that analyzes the relationship between innovations and firm performance by accounting for the impact of competitive forces in the industry. First, this study explicitly models competitive interactions between firms, known in the ecology literature as the Red Queen competition, in which gains from innovations are relative and impermanent. Second, hypotheses are tested using a comprehensive data set comprising all automobile manufacturers ever known to compete in the U. S. automobile market at any time between 1891 and 2000. Complete coverage of 110 years enables precise analysis of the link between innovations and firm performance as well as the coevolution in the U. S. automobile industry. The results suggest that although extensiveness of an innovation is relevant, a firm's ability to keep up with the competition in the innovation arms race is a more significant driver of survival in the market. Thus, firms cannot simply evaluate their innovation efforts in a silo but must constantly assess their efforts versus the innovation launches of their key competitors. Based on the findings, automotive manufacturers must develop a structured product development program that allows for continual and steady new product introductions; otherwise, even momentary setbacks can have a damaging impact on a firm's ability to survive in the automotive marketplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper aims at investigating the role of different types of proximity on the technological activity of a region within the context of a knowledge production function, where R&D expenditure and human capital are the main internal inputs. We thus assess to what extent the creation of new ideas in a certain region is enhanced by knowledge flows coming from proximate regions. In particular, we examine in detail different kinds of proximity by combining the usual geographical dimension with the institutional, technological, social and organizational proximity. The analysis is implemented for an ample dataset referring to 276 regions in 29 European countries (EU27 plus Norway, Switzerland) over the last decade. Results show that human capital and R&D are clearly essential for innovative activity with the former being much more effective in driving the production of knowledge. As for the proximity and network effects, we find that technological proximity outperforms the geographic one, whilst a limited role is played by social and organizational networks. As a result, the first policy message is that European regions still need to focus on policies aimed at increasing the endowments of well-educated labour force and therefore their knowledge base. Furthermore, we need innovation policies based on each region's specific innovation potential, due to the existing differences in geographical, cognitive, institutional, social and organizational structures and networks. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Decision makers considering policy or strategy related to the development of emerging technologies expect high quality data on the support for different technological options in order to track trends and allocate resources. A natural starting point would be R&D funding statistics. This paper explores the limitations of such aggregated data in relation to the substance and quantification of funding for emerging technologies. Using biotechnology as an illustrative case, we test the utility of a novel taxonomy to demonstrate the endemic weaknesses in the availability and quality of data from public and private sources. Using the same taxonomy, we consider the extent to which tech-mining presents an alternative, or potentially complementary, way to determine support for emerging technologies using proxy measures such as patents and scientific publications. We find that using proxy measures provides additional visibility of technological emergence and suggest these are a useful complement to financial data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Science and technology can play a crucial role in the long-term for the modernization of Russia and the armed forces, and many government initiatives have been approved but their implementation can be questioned. Russia has a strong science base into which it invests substantial funds, but that only to a limited extent generates competitive innovative products and services. The government still hopes the defense sector can be the driving force for innovation that is questioned in this article. The civilian research and development could be the driving force needed for promoting innovations but the problems that remain for the civilian science and technology sector are significant. The reform of the defense industry has been a long-time priority but very slow progress is being made due to difficulties to control it and because the problems facing the defense industries and research and development are even more serious in this sector in spite of large funding increases. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study analyses the additionality effects of R&D subsidies on innovation activity: specifically, the allocation of in-house R&D expenditures and economic returns from the innovation process. The magnitude of these effects has been established in the context of a common variable informing the design of innovation policies: firm size. The study reveals that regardless of firm size, public funding stimulates investment within the firm’s technological domain (applied research and technological development), but did not expand the technological knowledge frontier (basic research). The findings also show that R&D subsidies have different additionality effects upon economic returns derived from the innovation process. Although subsidies increased private R&D effort quite significantly in small firms, this only prompted an expansion in the sale of products new for the firm. However, large subsidized firms which only increased investment in technological development improved the sale of products new to the market. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The legislative framework under which Australia's new 'R&D Tax Incentive' (R&DTI) is to be administered received Royal Assent on 8 September 2011. The underlying policy objective of the R&DTI is to make Australian companies more innovative and globally competitive. One key feature of the R&DTI is the adoption of a tax credit system for research and development (R&D) expenditure, similar to that already in operation in the UK. This article identifies lessons for Australia (principally for policymakers, but also for practitioners and tax administrators) based on the UK experience of R&D tax credits. Findings are informed by in-depth interviews conducted with UK-based R&D tax advisors as to their evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the UK system in terms of its design, implementation and outcomes. The lessons include the need for policymakers to remain focused on the objectives of the R&DTI and how best to achieve these. This requires careful consideration of the level of incentives provided and the recipients. Simplicity should be a key objective. Tax administrators have an important role to play in promoting the scheme, and in particular, by engaging practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors discuss China's government science and technology (S&T)/research and development (R&D) expenditures on basic, applied, and mega-engineering programs (MEPs). Topics include the roles of agencies with R&D missions in China's national innovation system, such as the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), the promotion of transparency, China's gross domestic expenditure on R&D (GERD) compared to other countries, such as the U.S., and mandatory departmental annual reports (DARs).

The article discusses the development and funding of the graphene carbon material industry in Europe, with a focus on graphene research projects financed by the European Commission (EC) Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) competition beginning in 2013. Topics include investments by the EC in graphene research and development (R&D), the use of graphene carbon as a low-weight, conductive material in high-technology products, and patents related to technological innovations in the development as uses of graphene.

The article reports on the plan of BASF SE to increase its research and development spending to 1.7 billion euros in 2012. The firm focuses on innovation and sustainability as growth drivers. It also expands its product and technology portfolio to develop solutions for sustainable growth and development and to address social challenges.

This section offers technological innovation-related news briefs as of September 2013. Six global industrial research membership organizations has formed the World Federation of Industrial Research Associations (WFIRA). Internet services company Google has launched Project Loon, an Internet service provided by bouncing signals from ground stations to free-floating polyethylene balloons. A study shows that research and development (R&D) spending is likely to continue to grow in 2014.

The article focuses on the qualities of Human Computer Confluence (HCC), a cyberpsychology research in Europe. It says that HCC, which was launched by Future and Emerging Technologies (FET), supports developments of long-term technological innovation. It mentions three projects which will be financially supported by HCC such as Collective Experience of Empathic Data System (CEEDs),Virtual Embodiment and Robotic Re-Embodiment (VERE), and Human Computer Confluence Research in Action (HC2).