Geopolitics, Digital Sovereignty…What’s in a Word?

An overlay of digital networks and services often operated by global players encircles and “shrinks” the planet. At the same time, the geopolitical dynamics have entered a cycle of feud for leadership between trade blocs who compete for economic and industrial leadership but also on ethics, values, and political outlook. In this context, governments and lawmakers are struggling to combine the need for global cooperation in digital matters with the imperative to protect their jurisdiction from undue influence and provide economic agents with the means to compete on a global scale. The concept of “digital sovereignty” was carved to address this. Words matter a lot especially when they are meant to translate political goals. We argue that “digital sovereignty” lacks meaning and teeth, while the concept of “strategic autonomy” is more operative, contains in itself the elements of strategic planning, and should lead EU to aim at genuine “digital non-alignment.”

An Exploratory Study of How Latecomers Transform Strategic Path in Catch-Up Cycle

In catch-up cycles, the industrial leadership of an incumbent is replaced by a latecomer. Latecomers from emerging economies compress time and skip amplitude by breaking the original strategic path and form a new appropriate strategic path to catch up with the incumbents. Previous studies have found that the original strategic path is difficult to break and difficult to transform. This paper proposes a firm-level framework and identifies the impetus and trigger factors for latecomers to transform the strategic path. The impetus is the mismatch between strategic mode and technological innovation capability. The trigger is the progressive industrial policy. Based on a Chinese rail transit equipment supplier’s (China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation; CRRC) catch-up process, this paper finds that the strategic path transformation is an evolutionary process from mismatch to rematch between strategic mode and technological innovation capability. With the implementation of industrial policy, the technological innovation capability will change. The original strategic mode does not match with changed technological innovation capability, which leads to performance pressure. With the adjustment of industrial policy, a new strategic mode adapted to new technological innovation capability emerges. This paper clarifies the source that determines successful catch-up practices for latecomers and contributes to latecomers’ sustainable growth in emerging economies.

Corporate survival in Industry 4.0 era: the enabling role of digital twin technologies

In Industry 4.0 era high-tech companies have digitally transformed production and have taken the lead globally. Among the many advanced technologies, the digital twin is the unifier of many cross-cutting digital technologies, acting as a driver of digital transformation, enabling breakthroughs and allowing companies to move to new levels of sustainability and industrial leadership in global markets. The paper has sought to identify generalized characteristics of the digital twins. The results can be used to classify what is a digital twin. After providing a digital twin definition and characterization, the process of practical implementation of digital twins in different industries has been examined. The key drivers and limiting factors of digital twin implementation strategies are also discussed to inspire future studies. The research was based on the digital twins’ impact analysis on various industries using leading industry data sources, analytical reports, international indexes and indicators.

From catching up to industrial leadership: towards an integrated market-technology perspective. An application of semantic patent-to-patent similarity in the wind and EV sector

Studies on catching up and industrial leadership have often used market-related variables to evaluate the catch-up trajectories of latecomer countries and firms. In this study, we aim to enhance our understanding of these concepts by presenting an integrated market-technology framework. Using natural language processing techniques allows us to go beyond patent numbers and analyze patent novelty and impact as well as technological changes over time. In empirical case studies on wind energy and electric vehicles in China, Japan, and South Korea, we compare and identify country and sector-specific catch-up trajectories and potential catch-up traps.

Multidisciplinary Design of a Low-Noise Propeller: Part II — Efficient Aero-Acoustic-Mechanical Design Methodology Exploiting Surrogate Models in an Adaptive Design Space

The regional aircraft segment plays a crucial role in achieving the EU Flightpath 2050 objectives (increase connectivity through Europe, enforce Europe’s industrial leadership, and significantly reduce the environmental impact of aviation). Despite an outdated perception by the general public, turboprop aircraft are typically less expensive to operate than regional jets. The impact of new technologies is therefore even more evident. Achieving a significant reduction in perceived noise levels remains however a challenge for the success of further turboprop deployment. This twofold paper discusses the design of an innovative low-noise propeller in the framework of the Clean Sky 2 Regional Aircraft IADP, with a focus on the design methodology itself in this second part. The design is inherently multidisciplinary — aerodynamic, acoustic, mechanical — with multiple flight conditions and a wind tunnel condition to be considered. In order to limit the number of expensive high-fidelity computations, an online surrogate-based optimisation (SBO) approach has been deployed. A high-dimensional design space has been considered to enable to identify disruptive low-noise concepts. By exploiting the results of low-fidelity tools (see the first part of the paper), combined with efficient machine learning techniques and data mining capabilities, a gradual increment of the design space from 57 to 111 design parameters has been considered. A significant noise reduction of about 6.5 dB has been achieved without major degradation of the aerodynamic efficiency — fully aligned with the objectives for the Regional Aircraft IADP.