Innovators and researchers, two complementary worlds essential to the global economy:
The knowledge market, as we interpret it, brings together two players: those who create knowledge and those who use it to innovate. As the illustrative chart below explains, most of companies decide to be more or less specialized into research or into innovation.
These two worlds appear to be very effective with more than 1,568,280 scientific publications registered and 240,000 patents registered worldwide in 2016 alone.
What could better illustrate the predominance of these players in our economies than the huge amount of money spent for research and development (basic research, applied research and experimental
development) in the world’s major economies? By way of illustration, for 2017, this amount should reach 2,066 billion dollars worldwide, including 527 billion dollars in the USA, 275 billion dollars in Europe and 430 billion dollars in China.
Expenditure which, for almost all the main players, is increasing from year to year, a sign that it is indeed an essential and identified vector of economic power. This dynamism is also reflected in the growth of the number of researchers and knowledge creators. In 2015, 1.84 million of researchers were employed in the European Union (30% more than in 2005), with some countries (Portugal, Ireland, Greece) almost doubling their workforce over ten years. R&D activities thus represent 277,630 researchers in France,
which then ranks third in the European Union in terms of headcount, behind Germany (387,980) and the United Kingdom (289,330). The number of researchers in China reaches 1.62 million in 2015, significantly more than in the United States (1.38 million).
…BUT STILL FACING A LACK OF COMMUNICATION BETWEEN EACH OTHER
These two worlds, though inseparable from each other, struggle to meet effectively on a large scale. However, when this does occur, the meetings are the result of local initiatives (university Spin Off for example) or the «traction» of actors powerful enough to bring these two worlds together (SpaceX, Alibaba, Alphabet: from companies at the forefront of innovation to a plethora of researchers).
The 2017 breakdown of a typical R&D budget is an illustration of the difficulty for the actors we are interested in finding the knowledge they do not have internally: the share dedicated to the acquisition of external knowledge represents only 7% of the total, a sign of a certain lack of openness towards the outside world.
This total of 7% today significantly low (although already representing several billions of dollars at a global scale) is likely to grow in the years to come. It illustrates the tremendous growth potential of the knowledge
economy.
Schematically, the current situation — illustrating this lack of external exchanges — would be as follows:
The part dedicated to the external knowledge acquisition, which is currently small, can be represented by a small winding road. Then the knowledge transfer is slow and impracticable. The objective for the future is to intensify these knowledge exchanges by setting up new communication channels.
AN ECONOMY OF KNOWLEDGE FOR ALL
All around the world, improving and accelerating the trades of knowledge is essential for a successful transition to an efficient knowledge-based economy. However, depending on regional and local contexts, the degree of maturity of the societies and actors, the improvement of trades is reflected in different ways:
• In Africa, the strength of the countries lie in the number of their citizens, as well as the energy and leadership of these. These countries also benefit from a strong potential of innovative SMEs and a university network in demand for openness to the world.
• In the Middle East, awareness has been raised and a transition to a knowledge-based economy is taking place. Innovations are multiplying, and at both company and university level, there is a strong appetite for acquiring knowledge and know-how.
• In Asia and Oceania, a distinction is made between countries with young populations in need of knowledge and who wish to innovate and those already playing in the knowledge economy. Those are naturally in demand for a system that makes knowledge trades more fluid and multiplies innovations.
• In South America, an important and very dynamic university network is in demand to be able to trade more and more with the rest of the world.
• In Europe, North America and the Commonwealth, as in the precursor countries of Asia, all the ingredients for a strong and powerful economy of knowledge are united. The economic and social framework is favorable to business creations and innovations. The production of knowledge is important and of an excellent quality. The last missing component is the binder allowing the dynamics of knowledge trades to amplify.
Connecty.io makes it possible:
- An opening on the world beyond borders and cultural barriers
- An opening on the other, on the one who needs knowledge, on the one who likes to share his knowledge.
- An acceleration and multiplication of trades between all the players involved in knowledge creation and innovation.
In 2015 only, the global knowledge economy represented $1,926 billion USD spent on Research and Development.
Connecty.io addresses the external Research and Development flows market. A global market for knowledge purchases worth 134 billion dollars in 2015, or on average 7% of annual Research and Development expenditure.
In France and again, just in 2015, this market of knowledge trading represented 4.2 billion euros and included an ecosystem of 2,500 public laboratories and 24,300 innovative companies.
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