Project description
Studying technology competition in critical sectors
China, Europe, and the US are competing for access and control of crucial sectors such as semiconductors, cloud computing, and space technology. These serve as the backbone, brain, and legs of technological innovation, significantly impacting economic, military, and geopolitical hierarchies. The ERC-funded CODE project proposes a theoretical framework and mixed-method approach to examine technology competition across various sectors. It hypothesises that the unique technological characteristics of each sector play a role in explaining why they succeed in some industries but not in others. Focusing on semiconductors, cloud computing, and space technology, CODE investigates technologically complex and highly politicised sectors. It holds high-gain potential as it contributes to advancing debates in international relations, political economy, management, and innovation.
Objective
The Competition in the Digital Era (CODE) project investigates the competition between China, Europe and the United States (US) for access and control of three critical technological sectors: semiconductors, cloud computing and space. These sectors are, respectively, the backbone, the brain and the legs of the current wave of technological innovation and they have a fundamental impact on economic, military and geopolitical hierarchies.
CODE proposes a multidisciplinary theoretical framework and an original mixed-method approach to study technology competition in these sectors. The main hypothesis of the project is that the very technological characteristics of the industrial sectors are key to explain when and why China, Europe and the US succeed in some sectors and struggle in others. Specifically, different combinations of cycle of technological change (the speed at which technologies evolve in each industrial sector) and the degree of modularity (the possibility to divide complex technical systems into components and outsource them to external suppliers) generate different hypotheses on the ability of China and Europe to compete with the US in semiconductors, cloud and space.
CODE is a high-risk project because investigates technologically complex and highly politicized sectors. Yet, it is also a high-gain project as simultaneously advances the debate on international relations (US-China geopolitical transition, Europe’s role in the world), political economy (role of the state in technology innovation, role of global value chains) and management and innovation (how technology competition unfolds in highly politicized sectors).
Fields of science
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsHost institution
1050 Bruxelles / Brussel
Belgium