Key Enabling Technologies (KETs): Firms’ Key to Radical Innovation?

This study analyses the influence of Key Enabling Technologies (KETs) on radical innovation at the firm-level in 27 EU countries. KETs are a group of six technologies that are considered to be promising for Europe’s industrial competitiveness and innovativeness because they are horizontal and widely combinable, representing properties of General Purpose Technologies. We test this by investigating whether KET knowledge promotes the emergence of radical innovation in firms and whether regional specialization in KETs can moderate this relationship. Based on a unique firm-level database, our results show that KETs generally facilitate the emegence of radical innovation and that firms lacking KET knowledge in particular can benefit from being located in regions specialised in KETs. However, when focusing on the six individual KETs, the results get markedly heterogeneous and point to differences in the influence of engineering-oriented and science-based KETs. Our results therefore call for tailored, KET-specific, approaches – both in research and policy.