Emerging 21st Century technologies: Is Europe still falling behind?

Firms and countries that specialise in emerging technologies tend to have a higher chance of becoming or remaining competitive in the future. This paper aims to analyse the most dynamic areas of technological competition between 2010 and 2019 and to identify which actors are leading in those areas. We analyse patenting dynamics in four major patent offices (USPTO, EPO, JPO, KIPO), to have a global landscape of technological dynamism, and we use the IPC patent classification system to proxy the technological areas. After examining patenting growth patterns in all 4-digit IPC classes, we built a score to classify the emergent technological areas across the four offices. Our results indicate twelve “emerging” IPC classes, which are related to software engineering, digital communication, IT methods for management, medical technology, pharmaceuticals, energy conservation, games, biotechnology and semiconductor devices. We find that European firms do not hold a leading share in any of these IPC classes. This is particularly true in emerging areas such as software engineering, energy conservation and semiconductor devices, which are likely to be critical to succeed in the new techno-paradigms related to digitalization and clean energy.