Abstract
The Blue Economy can be a driver of European growth, through the development of new competences and activities that enable a sustainable exploitation of ocean resources. This paper assesses the directions followed by the research and innovation activities performed by Portuguese organisations in the fields encompassed by the "Blue Economy", at the light of national and EU strategies. It analyses the projects developed by Portuguese actors in the context of European framework programmes to uncover: the areas privileged - namely the relative importance of emerging areas vs. new advances targeting established ones - and the relative position of different types of organisations in the developments taking place.
The results point to stronger efforts in system domains related to marine resources and the marine environment and in some industry oriented domains. Among the latter, emerge new industries such as marine biotechnology and marine renewable energies and established industries exploiting marine living resources (fisheries, aquaculture). The results highlight the prominent position of research organisations in both new and established areas, as well as the relevant position of new technology intensive firms, in areas that require the development of application-oriented activities, where they often intermediate between research and industry. The results suggest that the international cooperation favoured by these projects permitted to open-up the national system, contributing to broaden the organisations' knowledge bases and to extend their international networks.
HIGHLIGHTS
Investimento principal ao nível do sistema (recursos marinhos e ambiente) e em alguns domínios orientados para a indústria
Investigação visa quer novas indústrias, como energia ou biotecnologia marinha, quer indústrias estabelecidas, como pesca e aquacultura
Papel central das organizações de investigação que dominam em atividades estruturais
Novas empresas de base tecnológica em áreas como biotecnologia, robótica ou materiais, frequentemente intermediárias entre investigação e indústria
Oportunidade para organizações portuguesas expandirem redes internacionais e alargarem bases de conhecimento
Fontes, M., Sousa, C. and Conceição, O. (2019) Creating a Blue Economy: Research and innovation partnerships to accelerate the development of ocean-related industries, Proceedings of Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University International Scientific Conference on innovations in digital economy (SPBPU IDE’19), October 24-25, 2019, Saint – Petersburg, Russia. ACM, New York. (ISBN 978-1-4503-7244-2/19/10).