Science and Public Policy August 2011 0302-3427/11/70521-20 US$12. 00 ï Beech tree Publishing 2011 521 Science and Public Policy, 38 (7 august 2011, pages 521†540 DOI: 10.3152/030234211x12960315268010; http://www. ingentaconnect. com/content/beech/spp European competitiveness in information technology and long-term scientific performance Andrea Bonaccorsi The reasons behind the poor competitiveness of the European information technology (IT) industry vis -Ã-vis the US one have been discussed many times. This paper suggests that the long-term competitiveness of science-based industries is dependent on the ability of the underlying scientific base to support fast growing, turbulent and proliferating search regimes. This requires institutional mechanisms that foster severe selection of scholars from a large base, student and researcher mobility and strong institutional complementarity with user industries. The paper compares the history of IT in the USA, Germany, the UK and France. Based on the analysis of the curriculum vitae of the top 1, 000 scientists in computer science, it shows that these conditions were met only in the US academic system HAT EUROPEAN INDUSTRY IS NOT globally competitive in IT is well known, and has been the subject of many analyses and policy reflections at government and European Commission level. This assessment is based on con -verging data on some innovation inputs (R&d ex -penditure of firms), intermediate outputs (patents and final outputs (international trade), although on different time scales In recent years, the European commission has pro -vided highly informative company-level analyses of R&d investment, with data related to 2004 (European Commission, 2005) and to 2009 (European Commis -sion, 2010. In the two categories of IT hardware and software, there were a few European companies that spent more than â 1 billion on R&d in the year 2004 In the IT hardware category, just four companies from Finland (Nokia), Sweden (Ericcson), France Alcatel) and Germany (Infineon Technologies) are recorded against six in the USA (Intel, HP, Cisco Motorola, Texas instruments and Sun) and four in Japan (Hitachi, Toshiba, NEC and Fujitsu. 1 The situ -ation is even worse in software and computer ser -vices. SAP was the only European company spending more than â 1 billion for R&d, while Microsoft, IBM and Oracle combined spent ten times that amount. In addition, there were 26 companies from the USA and three from Japan spending more than â 100 million against only six in Europe. The 2010 Scoreboard European commission, 2010) has a different sectoral classification, but confirms the overall picture. In the semiconductors sector, within the top 20 R&d inves -tors we find four European companies (STMICROELEC -tronics, NXP, Infineon Technologies and ASML against 10 from USA, two from Japan and four from Asia and other countries. In the software sector there are 14 US companies and six from Europe (SAP UBISOFT Entertainment, Dassault systemes, Sage Amdocs and Invensys). There are few European companies who are not only in the top list of software producers, but also in the wave of internet-related in -novators, or in the small group of successful startups such as Google, e-Bay or Amazon, surviving the new economy bubble, or in the top list of companies offer -ing IT-related services on a global scale. On a longer historical scale, companies which used to be national T Andrea Bonaccorsi is at the Department of energy and Systems Engineering, Faculty of engineering, University of Pisa, Largo Lucio Lazzarino 1-56122 Pisa, Italy; Email: a. bonaccorsi @gmail. com; Tel:++39 050 22 17 378; Fax:++39 050 22 17 333 Various earlier versions of this paper have been presented at the Atlanta Conference on Science and Technology Policy 2007), at the IPTS Workshop on Sectoral Specialisation of R&d in Europe (2008), and as a short paper within the work of the High-level Expert Group on The Future of Community Re -search Policy (Luc Soete, coordinator)( 2009. We thank partic -ipants at these seminars, particularly Ben Martin and Luc Soete for useful comments. We also thank Donatella Caridi and Fran -cesca Pierotti for research assistance European competitiveness: IT and long-term scientific performance Science and Public Policy August 2011 522 champions, such as Bull in France, Olivetti in Italy Siemens nixdorf in Germany, or ICL in the UK, are now virtually out of the market (Campbell-Kelly 2003 Second, data on patents may be criticized as less relevant for some subsectors of IT, such as software but are clearly a crucial indicator for hardware -related sectors. The Key Figures 2007 Report, using data from the European Patent office, stated that †the US is ahead of the EU in four out of six high-tech areas:(1) computers and automated business equipment,(2) microorganisms and genetic engineering,(3) lasers, and (4) semi -conductors. On the other hand, EU leads in aviation and in communication technology European commission, 2007: 54 Looking at patent data, it appears that in the patent class computer and automated business equipment the share of the EU-27 (the current 27 members of the EU) increases from 20.2%in 1995 to 25.8%in 2003, while in the same period the share of the USA declines from 50.3%to 43.5%.%While the gap shrinks, it is still very large. Extending the analysis to 2005 on data from the Patent Cooperation Treaty PCT), and using the larger definition of information and communication technologies (ICT), the Key Figures 2008†2009 Report showed that the share of EU-27 of the world ICT patent applications decreas -es from 31.0%in 2000 to 24.8%in 2005 (European Commission, 2008: 68. The general comment was that EU-27 is less specialised in high technology fields such as †pharmaceuticalsâ€, †computers office machineryâ€, †telecommunications†and †electronics†than in medium technology fields such as †general machineryâ€, †machine tools††metal products†and †transport. European Commission, 2008: 69 Over a longer period, Dalum et al. 1999) construct -ed the revealed technological advantage (RTA) indi -cator, as the share of a patent class in a country†s overall patenting divided by the share of this patent class in total US patenting. Values below one indi -cate negative specialization. On the basis of US patents in the period 1969†1994, they showed that the RTA of Europe in ICT steadily decreased vis-à -vis competitors, from 0. 86 in 1969†1974 to 0. 84 in 1979†1984 to 0. 73 in 1989†1994 Furthermore, Dalum et al. 1999) calculated the long-run market shares in international trade for core ICT hardware, including computers and peripherals semiconductors, and telecommunications equipment Europe declined from 63%in 1961 to 41%in 1994 while in the same period Japan rose from 4%to 30%and the USA defended its share, from 27%to 25 %Thus different indicators, although with different time scales, converge on supporting a broad picture of a competitiveness gap. Two qualifications are needed, however, which will be important for our interpretation First, European competitiveness is much stronger in telecommunications, where Nokia dominates sev -eral segments of the market and Ericcson is a large player (Santangelo, 1998; Hultã n and Molleryd 2003; Cantwell and Santangelo, 2003. In this paper we focus our attention on the narrow definition of IT excluding communication technology), since ex -plaining the causes of differential performances of Europe in the two broad areas of ICT would deserve a dedicated effort Second, while there are few European global players in IT, several companies are strong in niches of the market (Casper et al. 1999). ) As the 2010 Scoreboard notes The EU has some excellent software companies with strong positions in their subsectors or niches †there are just too few compared to the US. Examples include SAP in enterprise soft -ware, Autonomy in unstructured search and Sage in accounting and customer relationship management software for smaller businesses European commission, 2010: 37 In addition, Europe is relatively strong in embedded software, particularly in real-time applications for industrial automation, thanks to its leadership in the fields of mechanical and electrical engineering However, this software is sold not typically sepa -rately from the equipment. Again, the reasons be -hind large differences in performance between large markets and niches are worth exploring Linking several European gaps ICT competitiveness, productivity and growth The weak competitiveness of the European IT indus -try is considered worrisome for several reasons which extend far beyond the industrial policy domain. In fact, it has been shown that there is a re -lationship between these technologies, the slowdown in productivity in the European economy since the mid-1990s and the opening of a wide productivity gap with the USA since then. In turn, the productivi -ty gap is considered to be the main source of the gap in rates of growth between the two economies. It should be noted that the wider definition of ICT is usually adopted in this literature Andrea Bonaccorsi is professor of economics and man -agement at the University of Pisa, Italy. His main research interests include: the economic analysis of the dynamics of scientific knowledge, the functional theory of technology and empirical analysis of higher education. He has recently coordinated a large project for the publication of microdata from all European higher education institutions European competitiveness: IT and long-term scientific performance Science and Public Policy August 2011 523 Initial contributions pointed to the larger size of the ICT sector in the US industry and the earlier adoption of ICT in the US manufacturing industry as the main factors (Jorgenson and Stiroh, 2000. Sub -sequent analyses, based on sector-level data, showed that a large part of the gap is due to large gains in productivity in the US market service sector, which is a heavy user of ICT. Of particular importance is the stream of research originated by the construction of industry-level productivity data in the KLEMS project, supported by the European commission O†Mahony and Timmer, 2009; Timmer et al 2010). ) Inklaar et al. 2003) and Timmer and van Ark (2005) found that the US lead in labour produc -tivity is explained almost fully by two causes, both related to ICT: the deepening of ICT capital and the increase in total factor productivity originated from the production of ICT goods. O†Mahony and Vecchi 2005) also found a strong effect of ICT on the over -all growth of output in the case of the USA. In the summary words of Van Ark et al. 2008: 41 †the resurgence of productivity growth in the United states appears to have been a combina -tion of high levels of investment in rapidly progressing information and communications technology in the second half of the 1990s, fol -lowed by rapid productivity growth in the mar -ket services sector of the economy in the first half of the 2000s. Conversely, the productivity slowdown in European countries is largely the result of slower multifactor productivity growth in market services, particularly in trade, finance and business services A related body of literature has investigated the complementarity between investment in ICT and or -ganizational change in companies, again pointing to a gap between US and Europe (Bloom et al. 2007 van Reenen and Bloom, 2007 In general, the computer technology is considered a classical example of a general purpose technology whose impact on the economy is pervasive, trans -versal, and deep (Bresnahan and Trajtenberg, 1995 Ten Raa and Wolff (2000) identified the sectors that are most responsible for the growth in total factor productivity in the period 1958†1997 in the USA and discovered that the sectors accounting for the largest effect were computer and office equipment and electronic components. In addition, these sectors showed the largest spillover effects to other indus -tries, including services (Mamuneas, 1999. For these reasons the weakness of the European industry is considered generally with concern But why did the US economy adopt ICT earlier and more productively, first in the manufacturing sector, then in the market service sector? An inter -esting question is whether (but also why) there is a relationship between the performance of domestic ICT-goods producers and the spread of adoption of ICT in non-ICT sectors. This link is not at all obvious. The better performance of US ICT-goods producers might have benefitted also European adopters, albeit with a short delay. As we will see this issue can be explained better within the frame -work offered by this paper In search of an explanation for the competitiveness gap There are several possible explanations for the com -petitiveness gap suffered by the European IT indus -try (we now turn back to the narrow definition First, the role of military procurement and defence -related R&d should not be overlooked. Many tech -nological breakthroughs, including the original idea of the internet, originate from this source (Flamm 1988; Lowen, 1997. Since the USA devoted a large share of R&d to military uses, it is reasonable to ex -pect positive spillovers in the IT industry (Alic et al 1992). ) Second, one might call attention to the dra -matic role of large national markets in the estab -lishment of technological standards. Since almost all IT-based industries are subject to strong network ex -ternalities, once standards are established a lock in effect would give the leaders a long-term advantage The case of Microsoft in operating systems is an ob -vious example. Not surprisingly, in mobile phone technology Europe gained a leadership position also because of a first mover advantage in defining the global system for mobile communications (GSM standard. Thus market size may be considered a nat -ural advantage for US industry, one that cannot be modified by will (Mowery, 1996; Campbell-Kelly 2003). ) Third, one might refer to the linguistic heter -ogeneity of European countries to explain the diffi -culty in producing standardised or packaged products in software. According to this interpreta -tion, European software companies would be global -ly competitive, but they specialize in customised software products, which require adaptation to the customer and the use of national languages. In addi -tion, European markets are fragmented still in terms of regulation (particularly in services), standardiza -tion and professional practices, creating obstacles to international expansion of firms, increasingly to young innovative firms (Conway and Nicoletti 2006). ) Fourth, the corporate model is also relevant many European players in IT in the 1980s and 1990s were integrated vertically companies in large con -glomerates which were not responsive to the stock exchange market, which developed IT mainly for their internal corporate, that is, captive, market. This was a major long-term strategic mistake, insofar as it insulated IT business units from harsh competition in global markets (Becchetti, 2001. Vertical con -glomerates in countries with rigid labour markets tend to keep obsolete technologies alive for longer periods All these explanations have some truth in them and should be considered carefully. It is not the pur -pose of this paper to review the debate on European European competitiveness: IT and long-term scientific performance Science and Public Policy August 2011 524 competitiveness in the IT industry. Rather, we wish to suggest another factor, which has been somewhat neglected in this debate. We suggest that the long -run origins of competitiveness in a high technology industry are to be found in the excellence of the un -derlying scientific base. This does not translate at all linearly into new products and services. Much more than that, it nurtures the ecology of ideas and visions that give origin to innovation. There is a hidden link between the quality and dynamics of scientific re -search in the underlying fields, particularly computer science, and industrial competitiveness. We will use original evidence, admittedly of preliminary type, to support this proposition In the second section we will review some of the most important technological innovations in the IT industry and relate them to their intellectual origin This sets the stage for the third section, in which we propose a theoretical framework to articulate the re -lation between the dynamics of scientific knowledge or search regime) and the industrial competitive -ness. In the fourth section we review descriptive ev -idence drawn from a large sample of CVS of the top 1, 010 scientists in computer science worldwide Finally, we illustrate some policy implications of these findings and draw conclusions Technological competitiveness and long-term scientific performance a neglected link On the origin of ideas in the IT industry By any standard, the IT industry has witnessed an impressive record of technological progress after WORLD WAR II (WWII. As Gordon Moore once noted †if the transport industry had the same rate of progress, it would now be possible to fly from New york to Paris in a few minutes The IT industry is now a huge collection of special -ised and interdependent industries, each of which has established its own markets, end users, perfor -mance criteria, and learning curves What is the relationship between technological progress in this industry and scientific progress in underlying fields? This is not an obvious question particularly after careful economic theorizing and many historical and empirical reconstructions have demolished the myth of a linear transition between scientific discovery and technological development Let us start with a preliminary investigation based on expert opinion. A few years ago we asked a small panel of scientific authorities in computer sci -ence, in both European and US universities, to list the most important technological innovations in the industry after WWII and to identify the origins of the idea. Their opinions are valid still today Table 1 shows the list of top 10 innovations. Quite surprisingly, although eventually developed by companies and introduced to the market, all of them can be traced back to genuine new ideas originally conceived in the academic world. Although there may be a bias in this reconstruction, due to the pro -fessional background of our respondents, what is mentioned is not a pure academic outcome but tech -nological breakthroughs, eventually transformed into huge worldwide market opportunities There is another useful piece of information in Table 1. With the (partial) exceptions of the early pioneering ideas of John Von neumann and of the invention of the internet at CERN, all the major breakthroughs originated from academic research carried out by US scientists and/or in US universi -ties. Put it into a historical perspective, while the seminal theoretical contributions to the entire field of computer science were conceived by European thinkers (Alan Turing and John Von neumann) the evolution of the field in the half-century after WWII has been dominated by US scientists This evidence suggests that the linkage between technology and intellectual creativity might be much deeper and subtler than is possible to detect with classical economic indicators, such as citations in patents, or R&d expenditure. We must develop new approaches to carefully trace the flow of ideas from The origins of competitiveness in a high-tech industry lie within the excellence of the underlying scientific base. This does not translate linearly into new products and services Rather, it nurtures the ecology of ideas and visions that feed innovation Table 1. Origins of most important ideas in computer science and technology Top ten ideas in computer science 1. Turing machine (Goldstine and Von neumann; Turing 2. Programming languages; formal description of syntax and semantics; LISP (Mccarthy 3. Memory hierarchy; cache memory 4. User interface; graphic user interface (GUI; concept of window (Xerox Palo alto Research center; Apple 5. Internet (UCLA/DARPA; packet switched multinetworks; http and html protocols; WWW (Berners-Lee 6. Computational complexity; computational intractability pseudocausality 7. Relational database 8. Fourier fast transform (FFT)( Cooley and Tuckey 9. Efficient algorithms; data structure (Knuth and Tarjan 10. Artificial intelligence Source: our elaboration from expert opinion European competitiveness: IT and long-term scientific performance Science and Public Policy August 2011 525 the mountains of pure theory down to the sea of market competitiveness. We know that the path is not linear, but then we ignore how to trace commer -cial success back to the pioneering ideas. The incu -bation cycle of truly innovative ideas may be very long Luckily, computer science and the computer in -dustry have been the object of a massive historical literature, that has highlighted several key factors We draw from this literature to answer the following research question: To what extent do the technologi -cal performance and the industrial competitiveness of the IT industry depend on the quality of the un -derlying science? The answer to this question is pre -liminary to another one: To what extent can the poor performance of the European IT industry be traced back to the poor performance of its scientific base Historical reconstructions are absolutely clear about the dominant role of private companies, the importance of demand from the military and the ci -vilian business, and the importance of scale and scope, or the complementarity between technology manufacturing and marketing investment by large companies such as IBM (Flamm, 1988; Chandler 1990; Langlois, 1992; Mowery, 1996; Langlois and Steinmuller, 1999. Historical records of inventions in computer technology show a disproportionate share of contributions from companies (see Dummer 1997) for a broader reconstruction covering all fields of electronic inventions and discoveries. At the same time, they open several windows onto the underlying dynamics of knowledge generated in academia. As succinctly stated by Mowery and Rosenberg (1998: 140 University research played a key role in the growth of the US computer industry. Universi -ties were important sites for applied, as well as basic, research in hardware and software and contributed to the development of new hard -ware. (â€) By virtue of their relatively †open†research and operating environment that em -phasized publication, relatively high levels of turnover among research staff, and the produc -tion of graduates who sought employment elsewhere, universities served as sites for the dissemination and diffusion of innovation throughout the industry We briefly review some of the turning points in the history of computing in which this contribution is more evident. Evidence on the USA is offered first followed by evidence on the role of the European public research sector Historical evidence on the role of the scientific base: USA The era of digital computing in the USA was inau -gurated by the ENIAC electronic calculator (Ceruzzi 1998; Norberg, 2005), which was designed and built at Moore School of Electrical engineering, Universi -ty of Pennsylvania by Eckert and Mauchly, during WWII, to meet a requirement for calculating firing tables for the US ARMY. After this development, in 1945 the great mathematician John Von neumann described the abstract structure of a modern compu -ting machine, which eventually became universally acclaimed as the Von neumann architecture. Before that, IBM had developed the automatic sequence -controlled calculator (ASCC), known as Mark I which was still an electromechanical machine. It came out in 1944, resulting from on a joint effort be -tween IBM and the University of Harvard, which was established in 1939 (Moreau, 1984 Interestingly, as early as in 1946 the Moore School of the University of Pennsylvania and the US Army sponsored a course on the theory and tech -niques for the design of electronic digital computers However, the role of the university was not unam -biguous: in the same year one administrator of the Moore School †asked that members of the staff sign a release form that would prevent them from receiving patent royalties on their inventions. He brooked no discussion. Eckert and Mauchly refused to sign. They resigned on March 31, 1946 Ceruzzi, 1998: 25 Eckert and Mauchly soon established a company that developed the UNIVAC, the first large-scale comput -er, which was sold to the military, the Census bureau and to private companies for administrative uses. In the 1950s several companies entered the industry IBM hired Von neumann as a consultant in January 1952 and started a collaboration with his organiza -tion, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton Pugh, 1995. Another company, Engineering Research Associates, starting from code-breaking ac -tivities during WWII, hired engineers from the Uni -versity of Minnesota, among whom was Seymour R Cray, who eventually became a leader in supercom -puting. Another small company, Bendix, built the G -15 computer, based on Harry Huskey†s 1953 design at Wayne State university, Detroit, MI. Thus in the ear -ly days of the computer industry we witness many universities building their own machines, based on Von neumann or Turing architectures The role of universities greatly increased after a commercial move by IBM. In 1954 IBM delivered the 650, a machine that was installed mainly for business purposes in a thousand companies. Thomas Watson Jr decided that a university could benefit from a discount up to 60%on the price of the 650 if that university agreed to offer courses in business data processing or scientific computing (Watson 1990). ) This opened the way to a large diffusion of courses in computer science across US universities Meanwhile, US universities started to be involved in research on the component technologies underly -ing the computer. Soon after WWII, the University European competitiveness: IT and long-term scientific performance Science and Public Policy August 2011 526 of Illinois, Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) worked on magnetic core memo -ries (Pugh, 1984; Wildes and Lindgren, 1985. Bas -sett (2002) has shown that even in industrially sensitive fields such as metal-oxide semiconductor technology, large companies left their researchers relatively free to publish papers and to attend scien -tific conferences, thus interacting with academic researchers The role of academic research is also evident in the field of high-level programming languages, for both the USA and Europe. While the single most important language, FORTRAN, was invented by John Backus at IBM in 1954 (Pugh, 1995), the APT language for the control of machine tools was devel -oped by the Servomechanisms Laboratory of MIT in 1955, the ALGOL 60 was created by a committee convened by F L Bauer from the University of Mu -nich (Germany) in 1958, and COBOL was promoted by a group of universities and computer users which held a meeting at the Computation Center of the University of Pennsylvania in 1959. In turn, the LISP LANGUAGE was developed by John Mccarthy at MIT in 1958 (Moreau, 1984), PASCAL was devel -oped by Niklaus Wirth at ETH in Zurich (Switzer -land) in the period 1968†1969 (Wirth, 1996) and PROLOG was born in 1972 after the work of several French researchers mostly based at the University of Marseille (Colmerauer and Roussel, 1996. As with C++ ,it was developed in 1979 at Bell laboratories by Bjarne Stroustrup, on the basis of the work he did for his Phd at Cambridge university (UK Stroustrup, 1996 Academic excellence was not necessarily an in -gredient, however, particularly after the develop -ment of the software industry. In December 1968 IBM was forced by the US authorities to unbundle the commercialization of software from sales of hardware products, giving origin to a separate indus -try, which then propagated in several application ar -eas (Mowery, 1996. In many cases the development of software was the product of a large-scale entre -preneurial effort, carried out by thousands of indi -vidual programmers. As Campbell-Kelly (2003 209) puts it In the late 1970s, a typical software development firm consisted of one or two programmers with strong technical skills but no manufacturing marketing or distribution capabilities This trend was reinforced after the emergence of the personal computer (PC) in the 1980s, but also in the huge growth of the videogame industry and of soft -ware applications after the internet revolution. The creative skills of small firms were commercially ex -ploited by larger firms, or the former were acquired or disappeared. Universities did not play a direct sci -entific role in this massive bottom-up effort, but were a crucial element for the mass culture that fostered entrepreneurial activities In the software industry, most of the R&d is done by youthful programmers, usually not trained past the bachelor†s degree level, who crank out code in an intuitive but effective fashion. (Campbell-Kelly, 2003: 308 Programmers do not necessarily come from postgrad -uate studies at universities, but benefit from an envi -ronment in which new ideas are generated and debated on a continuous basis. Without such an aca -demic background it would not be possible to explain the hacker movement, or the explosion of creativity over the concept of PCS illustrated by popular books such as Levy (1984) or Freiberger and Swaine (1984 A similar line of interpretation has been proposed in an effort to explain the impressive success of Sili -con Valley. According to an influential historical lit -erature, it was the top quality research carried out at Stanford university that gave origin to the birth of the electronics industry (Leslie, 1992; Leslie and Kargon, 1996. In particular, Frederick Terman dean of the School of engineering and then provost at Stanford, promoted large military patronage in electronics and then supported graduate engineers in the creation of new corporations (for a critical view see Lowen, 1997. Other studies have confirmed, but also mitigated, this explanation. Kargon et al. 1992 consider a broader complex of academia, industry and government actors. Là cuyer (2006) has shown how Stanford students benefitted from updates in technology provided by companies located in the area, creating two-way technology flows The role of military procurement for the growth of computer technology cannot be understood only on the basis of a demand†pull mechanism. Much more than that has been occurring. The design of research activities for the military has nurtured historically a complex interaction between academic research and procurement needs. Norberg and O†Neill (1996 have studied the creation and activities of the Infor -mation Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in the period 1962†1986. They note that IPTO€ s early program emerged from the goals and desires of (â€) university researchers eager to investigate new computing techniques Throughout its entire life, IPTO followed the rules prescribed by its early director, Joseph C R Licklider that the first criterion to be used for selection of projects was that †the research must be excellent research as evaluated from a scientific or technical point of view. (Norberg and O†Neill, 1996: 29 As another source describes the arrangement Licklider developed an effective way of admin -istering the IPTO program, which was to place European competitiveness: IT and long-term scientific performance Science and Public Policy August 2011 527 his trust in a small number of academic centers of excellence that shared his vision-including MIT, Stanford, Carnegie mellon, and Utah-and give them the freedom to pursue long-term re -search goals with a minimum of interference Campbell-Kelly and Aspray, 2004: 191 Thus the crucial point is that military procurement of research reinforced criteria of scientific excellence which were not to be sacrificed for purposes of short-term utility Universities changed their role in the early histo -ry: in the heroic period until 1959 they were directly involved in full-scale design and prototype produc -tion of computers, while after the emergence of a dedicated computer industry they were rather com -mitted to fundamental research, education, scientific advice and consultancy Historical evidence on the role of the scientific base: Europe During WWII all large European countries had a promising start with the computer industry and built up foundations that could evolve into industrial competitiveness. Indeed, the origins of the computer technology are to be found in 20th century European science, particularly in the work of two intellectual giants: Alan Turing and John Von neumann. The reasons why an intellectual advantage did not turn into industrial competitiveness are worth exploring in detail. In the case of Europe, the role of universi -ties must be considered jointly with large public re -search organizations (PROS), such as Max Planck in Germany, or CNRS, INRIA and CNET in France We focus on three large European countries: the UK France, and Germany In 1937 The english mathematician Alan Turing published the first theoretical model of a modern computer, the universal Turing machine (Davis 2000). ) He had visited Princeton in 1936, where he met the great logician Alonzo Church and von Neumann, who in 1938 offered him a position Turing declined and went back to Cambridge, and during WWII played a great role in the production of a digital computer, known as COLUSSUS, which was developed as early as in 1943 for military use Randell, 1980; Lavington, 1980a) and kept secret for many years (Copeland et al. 2006). ) One of the main reasons why the UK did not capitalize on its early achievements in digital computers was that these machines were considered military secrets and were dismantled after WWII. In 1945 Turing joined the new Mathematics Division of the National Phys -ical Laboratory, where he contributed to the devel -opment of the automatic computing engine (ACE which was realized in 1950 and was the basis of a commercial version which was sold in the period 1955†1964 (Moreau, 1984. Two university groups were active in that period in the UK, one at Man -chester and another at Cambridge. As early as 1948 a prototype of the first completely electronic stored -program computer, conformed to the Von neumann architecture, was completed and labelled the Man -chester automatic digital machine (MADM)( Lav -ington, 1980a; 1980b). ) It went into operation in 1949. In the same year the electronic delay storage automatic computer (EDSAC) was realized at Cambridge. Here Maurice Wilkes developed ideas that prepared for high-level programming languages such as symbolic labels, macros, and subroutine libraries (Books LLC, 2010a. Thus in the early years of the computer era the UK was head-to-head with the USA. Ironically, as Moreau notes †it was the Europeans rather the Americans who were the first in the world to make a com -puter as a commercial product. Moreau, 1984 53 It was the Ferranti MARK I, built in collaboration with the Manchester University Group and delivered in 1951. A commercial computer, known as LEO was installed at a company in 1951, well before ENIAC (Campbell-Kelly, 1989; Ceruzzi, 1998 In France the theoretical roots of computer sci -ence were laid down as early as the 1930s. The French mathematician Louis Couffignal demonstrat -ed how a programmable binary calculator could be constructed using electromechanical technology as early as 1938, but his contribution was not well un -derstood by the scientific environment (Moreau 1984). ) The first machines were realized in the 1950s. The Bull Company†s prototype of Gamma 2 was shown at the international exhibition in Paris in 1951, while the Calculateur Universal Binaire de l†Armament (CUBA) was delivered to the military by the Societã d†Electronique et d†Automatisme in 1952. Bull†s Gamma 3, developed in 1952, was also a commercial success, with more than 1, 000 units sold (Leclerc, 1990; Moreau, 1984. In 1945 SEA introduced the CAB 2000 series, one of the first to use ferrite-core memories. According to Mounier -Kuhn, 1994: 214 †in 1960 Compagnie des Machines Bull was one of the world†s leading manufacturers of data processing machinery. It had a base of One of the main reasons why the UK did not capitalize on its early achievements in digital computers was that these machines were considered military secrets and were dismantled after WWII European competitiveness: IT and long-term scientific performance Science and Public Policy August 2011 528 over 4, 000 installations, of which a third were exported; 14,000 employees in France, ten fac -tories, and a global turnover of 201 million French francs, which had multiplied by 10 over the past 10 years Bull with the Gamma 60 was one of the competitors for the tender issued by the US Atomic energy Commission (AEC) for a machine 100 times faster than any then existing, alongside UNIVAC and IBM. Unfortunately, although highly innovative, the machine had several problems that would have re -quired substantive development, and failed to gain market share. These companies used to establish strong linkages with universities, particularly in Paris and Grenoble, and PROS The link between academic research and indus -trial production is also evident in the case of Ger -many and other German-speaking countries such as Switzerland and Austria. Here the construction of computers started with the pioneering work of Konrad Zuse well before WWII. Zuse started his efforts in 1936, developed the Z1 binary calculator in 1938, the Z2 mechanical calculator in 1939 and the Z3 relay calculator in 1941 (Zuse, 1980; Swedin and Ferro, 2005; Rojas, 2006. After WWII he es -tablished the Zuse KG company. In addition, the scientific foundations for the modern notion of software were established by academic groups in the 1940s and early 1950s. These included: the Plankalkã l of Zuse in 1945, the work of Rutishauer and Bohm in Zurich in 1951, and the work of Semelson and Bauer in Munich in the 1950s Bauer, 2002. Semelson studied the structure of programming languages and developed the notion of bracketed structures, a fundamental breakthrough in computer science, while Bauer was the first to propose the stack method of expression evaluation Jointly, they developed fundamental works on com -pilers (Books LLC, 2010b Indeed, Zuse†s work is considered by historians of computing technology to be the earliest pioneering work in the modern era. In his reconstructions of major early computing events Williams places European pioneers such as Zuse, Turing at NPL Williams and Kilburn at Manchester and Wilkes at Cambridge alongside Von neumann, Eckert and Mauchly, the Moore School, Harvard Universi -ty, IBM and the Bell laboratories in the USA Williams, 2000. In the early history of computing technology Europe and the USA were equally competitive These short summaries also make it clear that the early era of computer technology saw the deep involvement of the academic environment. Initially universities were involved directly in the produc -tion of prototypes. With the advent of the 1960s the heroic period of prototype building was over and large computer manufacturers emerged. How -ever, a sharp difference seems to emerge between the evolution of the technology in the USA and Europe. In the USA, this structural change did not bring a diminishing role for universities, but a re -design or their role around fundamental research education, scientific advice and consultancy. In Europe, the academic environment was leading head-to-head with the US one until the 1960s, but it seemed to lose ground in the subsequent decades Not many scientific stars from Europe are men -tioned in the studies of history of computing after the 1970s. This is an interesting puzzle. It is clear that the institutionalization of computer science as an academic discipline took place earlier in the USA, approximately in the 1950s, than in Europe where it started in the late 1960s and diffused in the 1970s. But this is in itself part of the question Why was the European academic system, which had generated pioneering achievements since the 1930s, so slow to accommodate the new discipline institutionally? We suggest that a deep exploration of this puzzle might shed light on the overall issue of the long-term competitiveness of the European IT industry In search of an explanation: characterizing the search regime of computer science In a stream of recent papers (Bonaccorsi, 2007 2008; 2010; Bonaccorsi and Vargas, 2010) we have argued that robust policy implications must be based on the comparative analysis of search regimes, or the characteristics of the dynamics of production of sci -entific knowledge. Scientific fields differ in the chal -lenges they pose to institutions of science at national level, so that their long-run performance depends on how national scientific systems adapt to them Bonaccorsi, 2011. It is therefore useful to try to characterize the history of computer science from the point of view of the underlying abstract dynam -ics of knowledge The National Research Council (NRC) of the US National Academies has edited a number of essays from leading scientists on the state of the art of computer science, with a collective introduction NRC, 2004. The opening description sets the stage for our discussion Computer science embraces questions ranging from the properties of electronic devices to the character of human understanding, from indi -vidual designer components to globally distrib -uted systems, and from the purely theoretical to the highly pragmatic. Its research methods are correspondingly inclusive, spanning theory analysis, experimentation, construction, and modelling. Computer science encompasses basic research that seeks fundamental under -standing of computational phenomena, as well as applied research. The two are coupled often grappling with practical problems inspires fundamental insights. NRC, 2004: 11 European competitiveness: IT and long-term scientific performance Science and Public Policy August 2011 529 This description is interesting for several reasons. To start with, it is not based on the classical dichotomy between pure and applied science. Differently from physics, where theoretical physics is detached often from experimental physics, in computer science there is a significant overlap. Great theorists also en -gage in developing (or have their students develop software code in order to test their results. This is fa -cilitated by the fact that the test of theories can be done in a relatively cheap way, by writing and run -ning programs, instead of doing experiments in laboratories Second, application is not just application, but is the source of inspiration for †fundamental insights†This means that those that bring new problems to the scientific community are considered not to be the fi -nal point of the application chain, but are themselves part of the discovery process. This has important in -stitutional consequences, insofar as the scientific community not only includes academicians, but also company scientists, engineers, technicians and man -agers. The professional boundaries between academ -ia and industry are blurred. Mobility between the two worlds is mandated by the content and practice of research There is a deep epistemic reason for why funda -mental research has been so important for the devel -opment of IT. As the introduction states succinctly computer science research (NRC, 2004: 15 †involves symbols and their manipulation and the creation and manipulation of abstractions †creates and studies algorithms and artificial constructs, notably unlimited by physical laws †exploits and addresses exponential growth †seeks the fundamental limits on what can be computed †focuses on the complex, analytic, rational ac -tion that is associated with human intelligence This explains why fundamentally new ideas on tech -nology are often the product of academic environ -ments, populated with visionary professors, hard -working Phd students, brilliant undergraduate stu -dents, rather than of corporate laboratories. The role of abstraction is crucial here. In technical terms, ab -straction means that there are sets of definitions that make it possible to manipulate the same object (e g procedures, or data) at many levels, preserving its fundamental properties. This makes it possible to move increasingly far from the physical implementa -tion on a hardware without losing the relevant aspects of the description. For example, it is possible to de -couple the program from the underlying hardware representation (Shaw, 2004. This is sharply different from what happens in most areas of engineering (as well as in the human brain. It would not be possible to ignore the detailed physical and geometric condi -tions of, say, materials, in the design of a mechanical structure: here the study of mechanical properties stability, elasticity or dynamics requires different tools and methods, but none of them can be done by abstracting from the specific features of the designed body and without physical testing. As a prominent theoretical computer scientist summarized The computer originated in the academic envi -ronment. Zuse and IBM are special cases. From the Moore School and the University of Iowa from Aiken and Wilkes to Algol, the vast majority of the essential steps were achieved on academic grounds. Neither the car nor the air -craft have come up this way. And there are very good reasons. One certainly is that the computer has an essential abstract side, most visible in programming, and abstract automati -zation is at least not a usual industrial subject Zemanek, 1997: 16 To illustrate the power of abstraction, the introductory essay in the NRC€ s volume notes that †the Internet works today because of abstrac -tions that were products of the human imagina -tion. Computer scientists imagined †packets†of information flowing through pipes, and they symbolically) worked out the consequences of that idea to determine the new laws those flows of information must obey. This conceptualiza -tion led to the development of protocols that govern how data flows through the Internet what happens when packets get lost, and so on NRC, 2004: 18; see Peterson and Clark, 2004 The discussion above can be summarized using the notion of a search regime (Bonaccorsi, 2008. Ac -cording to this notion, the dynamics of production of knowledge in scientific fields can be characterized along three dimensions: the rate of growth, the dy -namics in knowledge diversity, and the nature of complementarity. On the basis of an extensive his -torical reconstruction and of informed reports from scientists, we can conclude that the search regime of computer science has been characterized by turbulent We conclude that the search regime of computer science has been characterized by a turbulent rate of growth, proliferation dynamics, and strong cognitive and institutional complementarity European competitiveness: IT and long-term scientific performance Science and Public Policy August 2011 530 rate of growth, proliferation dynamics, and strong cognitive and institutional complementarity The large rate of growth and the divergent dynam -ics (proliferation) derive from the intrinsic epistemic dynamics. On one hand, after the emergence of mi -croelectronics Moore†s law (which is not a law of nature, but a law of business), granted order of magni -tude increases in computing power over time relaxing year after year the constraints on computa -tion. At the same time, the symbolic representational nature of computer programs made it possible to ex -plore hundreds of different directions at relatively low cost. Programming languages added further diversity to the search regime, by allowing computing results to be obtained in many different programming ways The abstract nature of computer objects (e g. data procedures) allowed a process of progressive trans -formation of many fields of reality, previously repre -sented in analogical ways, in the form of bits. This has triggered a proliferation dynamics, whereby, at any point in time, there have been several diverse research trajectories, sometimes also in competition, rather than convergence on a few research programmes Bonaccorsi and Vargas, 2010 The nature of complementarity also comes from the epistemic dynamics. The progressive digitaliza -tion of regions of reality (not only data but images sound, movement, all sorts of physical parameters etc.)) has attracted a large number of other disciplines into computer science, creating powerful forms of cognitive complementarity. Not only mathematics logics, and electric and electronic engineering have been involved into computer science since the be -ginning, but also biology and chemistry (bioinfor -matics), earth sciences (geographic information systems), psychology (artificial intelligence), visual art (computer graphics), operations management enterprise resource planning), and many other cog -nitive fields. All have been transformed deeply from the relationship with computer science. In all cases there was not just †applicationâ€, but, as noted above †fundamental insights†to be gained from this complementarity Another form of complementarity is defined insti -tutionally, i e. the systematic interaction between scientific and nonscientific institutions, such as in -dustry, hospitals, government. In computer science this complementarity comes from the constitutive in -terplay between theoretical work and pragmatic goals (Bonaccorsi, 2010 A crucial point is that this process is dynamic and self-reinforcing. Building up an attractive scientific environment requires obsessive attention to quality criteria in recruitment and promotion of academic staff, as well as ambitious goals in the selection of students. The two reputational processes reinforce each other and make it credible to raise government or private money for research Summing up, we see considerable evidence of in -tense exchanges of ideas and knowledge flows be -tween industry, academia and government. Although it cannot be said that university research has been the source of most inventions, it has played a promi -nent role in creating new concepts and ideas, in maintaining a challenging intellectual climate, and in supporting the entrepreneurial attitude of students and graduate researchers. Also, deep and radically new ideas often originated in academic environ -ments, were incubated for some years, and eventual -ly found their way into innovations in the market We are faced then with our two research ques -tions. First, is there a systematic relationship be -tween quality of academic research and industrial competitiveness in IT? If the answer is yes, then there is a second question: Is there a structural dif -ference between Europe and the USA in this re -spect? In order to address these questions we now present fresh empirical evidence and then build up an explanation New evidence on scientific excellence in computer science An analysis of the CVS of top computer scientists An interesting perspective is to look at the large community of computer scientists and at their own self-validation processes. Citations to papers in computer science are recorded automatically by Citeseer, 2 a highly structured indexing system estab -lished in 1997 and endorsed by most scientific socie -ties and departments in computer science worldwide The Citeseer service ranks scientists by the total number of citations, without checking for homo -nyms and controlling for the age of scientists. There -fore it may be considered a crude approximation for more sophisticated bibliometric exercises. However over large numbers the probability and size of errors are considered acceptable We downloaded from the internet all CVS of all top 1, 000 scientists in the Citeseer service, as of end 2005 (more precisely, n=1, 010. These scientists have the largest cumulative number of citations in papers from a list of journals and conferences in computer science, irrespective of their age. Their av -erage age is 56 years, with a minimum of 30 years CV downloading and data processing was done manually by a team of research assistants Information from CVS is well known to be highly informative and rich, but is usually not valid and is statistically difficult to treat. Self-declaration cannot be checked with any accuracy. The updating of in -formation is totally arbitrary. The format is free and practical experience shows many instances of arbi -trariness and bizarre attitudes. Thus there is often no way to fill in missing information from any other source. In a few cases we had to address the scien -tists by mail, in order to check for missing infor -mation, but not always with success We therefore decided to focus mainly on hard in -formation, in which the incentive to misrepresent European competitiveness: IT and long-term scientific performance Science and Public Policy August 2011 531 reality may be low. Several items of data are still missing, so the analysis must be done on different samples, variable by variable. A number of interest -ing insights can be derived from this type of infor -mation. Looking at the top scientists at the top their career and recognition is a useful way to reconstruct the history of scientific achievements in the last half -century. What follows is a purely descriptive treat -ment of data, with limited comment Patterns of educational mobility We identified the location of the universities at which top scientists received their academic degrees Such information can be retrieved with certainty for 855 scientists in the case of Phd, 457 for the Master degree and 641 for the Bachelor degree (see Table 2 In terms of information availability, it is likely that not all scientists received a Master degree which is not formally necessary to receive the Phd in several academic systems. In turn, the difference between the total number of observations for Phd and the size of the sample (855 vs 1010) may be due to people without a Phd degree or to people not mentioning the place of their degree. It is impossible to disentangle the two effects. Furthermore, it is pos -sible that some scientists do not mention the place of their first degree, which is a necessary preliminary to receiving a Phd The geographic distribution of Phds is extremely concentrated: US universities gave the degree to future top scientists in 76.5%of observable cases against 16.6%in the case of Europe. This gives an extremely accurate view of the type of tough compe -tition in this community: it is almost impossible to rank high in the computer science field without a Phd from either the USA or Europe, with the USA dominating by a large margin. A similar level of concentration can be observed in the case of Master degrees. These degrees require a great deal of inter -national mobility and tend to be considered a first step towards the Phd for talented students. Very in -terestingly, the geographical distribution is much less concentrated in the case of Bachelors. Here a good 15%of students come from Asia and 10.9 %from other countries. It seems that the US academic system has been historically able to attract talented graduate students from all over the world, offering Master and Phd degrees as intermediate steps towards a scientific career In evolutionary terms, it seems that the US aca -demic system has superior properties of variety gen -eration, in the sense that is able to identify, select and motivate a continuous flow of intellectual talent irrespective of the culture of origin, to be channelled into a powerful system of selection and retention Additional insights can be obtained by examining the time evolution of Phd degrees. We obtained in -formation on the year of receiving their Phd for 719 scientists. Note that the place of Phd degree is in -stead recorded in 855 CVS (see below. We decided not to compute the date in a conventional way, for example by adding a fixed number of years to the birth date, or similar interpolation techniques For this sub-sample of 719 scientists, we observe see Table 3) an extremely skewed distribution of the place of degrees, with the USA representing 77 %of the total and Europe 16%,five times less. In terms of cohorts, it is interesting to observe that by end of the 1960s the US universities had already granted 89 Phd degrees to those that eventually be -came top scientists. After that, there is a progression in the number of degrees in US universities, while the same is not true for European universities. This finding sheds light on the puzzle identified in the section of this paper on †Technological competitive -ness and long-term scientific performance: a neglected link? â€: while Europe was at the leading edge in the 1950s, it gradually lost ground. The con -sequences of this weakness rapidly became visible In the period 1980†1989, a period of explosion of computer science and information technology, US Table 2. Distribution of degrees of top computer scientists by geographical area Area Phd degree Master degree Bachelor degree Number%Number%Number %USA 654 76.5 332 72.6 363 56.6 Europe 142 16.6 58 12.7 112 17.5 Asia 9 1. 1 30 6. 6 96 15.0 Other 50 5. 8 37 8. 1 70 10.9 Total 855 100.0 457 100.0 641 100.0 It is almost impossible to rank high in the computer science field without a Phd from either the USA or Europe with the USA leading by a large margin European competitiveness: IT and long-term scientific performance Science and Public Policy August 2011 532 universities were able to attract 207 high potential candidates(+55%with respect to the previous decade), against only 37 at European institutions â'23%.%Something must have happened in that pe -riod, probably a manifestation of the accumulation of weaknesses It is highly informative to examine the identity of those universities that granted undergraduate and postgraduate degrees to those brilliant scientists in their early days. Again, we focus on the upper tail of the distribution of universities, because we are more interested in understanding the dynamics at the ex -treme, rather than the average properties. This is more informative about the real conditions of mobil -ity and capacity building in a highly turbulent scien -tific field Therefore we select the top 15 universities in which the top scientists have received their degree at each of the three levels of education, i e. Phd Master, and Bachelor (see Table 4), in descending order for the Phd The top 15 universities represent 56.2%of all universities granting a Phd to the 855 top scientists for which we are able to reconstruct the information In turn, the top 15 universities represent 47.1%of those granting the Master degree (n=457) and 41.3%of those granting the Bachelor (n=641. The differences in the coverage rate shows that postgrad -uate education is concentrated more than undergrad -uate. Nevertheless, the top 15 universities cover between 40%and almost 60%of the sample, a rea -sonable proportion for our analysis We start from Phd education. A few comments are in order. First, the top ranking covers mostly US universities, with two Europeans featuring in the 10th position (Cambridge, UK) and 14th position Edinburgh, UK) and a Canadian one in the 13th po -sition (Toronto. Second, the distribution is highly concentrated. As stated, the first 15 universities at -tract 56.2%of all scientists for whom we have full information. But this is not enough: the first four MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Carnegie mellon) attract Table 3. Distribution of year and place of Phd degree of top scientists in computer science Year USA Europe Asia Other Not available Total <1950 4 4 0 0 0 8 1950†1959 19 3 0 0 0 22 1960†1969 66 9 2 3 0 80 1970†1979 134 48 1 10 0 193 1980†1989 207 37 4 18 2 268 1990†present 122 17 1 7 1 148 Total 552 118 8 38 3 719 Table 4. Ranking of top 15 universities granting Phd, Master and Bachelor degrees to top scientists in computer science Phd degree Master degree Bachelor degree Number%Number%Number %MIT 82 9. 6 47 10.3 45 7. 0 Stanford university 78 9. 1 29 6. 3 10 1. 6 University of California at Berkeley 69 8. 1 27 5. 9 20 3. 1 Carnegie mellon University 43 5. 0 13 2. 8 Harvard university 35 4. 1 14 3. 1 25 3. 9 Cornell University 27 3. 2 12 2. 6 11 1. 7 Princeton university 26 3. 0 15 2. 3 University of Illinois 22 2. 6 12 2. 6 University of Michigan 20 2. 3 9 2. 0 18 2. 8 University of Cambridge 16 1. 9 18 2. 8 Yale university 15 1. 8 7 1. 5 14 2. 2 University of Wisconsin 14 1. 6 10 2. 2 University of Toronto 13 1. 5 7 1. 5 9 1. 4 University of Edinburgh 13 1. 5 University of Pennsylvania 13 1. 5 University of Massachusetts 8 1. 8 University of Washington 7 1. 5 University of California at Los angeles 7 1. 5 Indian Institute of technology 7 1. 5 34 5. 3 National Taiwan University 13 2. 0 California Institute of technology 12 1. 9 Technion Israel Institute of technology 11 1. 7 Brown University 10 1. 6 Total number of observations 855 457 641 Note: universities not in USA are in italics European competitiveness: IT and long-term scientific performance Science and Public Policy August 2011 533 almost one-third of the total. Third, a mutual rein -forcement mechanism is clearly in place. Brilliant students target top universities because there they have the opportunity to meet and to work with the best scientists. Top universities actively target tal -ented students to confirm their reputation. Postgrad -uate education seems to be a promising candidate to explain the success of the scientific careers of these scientists. Understanding the extraordinary success of the US Phd model in turbulent fields is therefore a key for policy learning When examining the distribution of universities granting the Master degree the top list is slightly dif -ferent. There are a few new entries from the USA e g. University of Massachusetts and University of California at Los angeles), but the most interesting new entry is the Indian Institute of technology which is not a single institution but an umbrella organization for several universities The situation changes quite drastically when we move to the Bachelor degree, the entry point for stu -dents considering a career in computer science. In this list the Indian Institute of technology ranks se -cond, contributing with 34 undergraduate students to the flow of future star scientists. Interestingly, here we find many more universities outside the USA from Europe (Cambridge), Taiwan (National Taiwan University), Israel (Technion Institute of technology and Canada (Toronto Our interpretation is as follows. The talent pool for a career in computer science is worldwide. En -try points are good universities offering strong basic scientific knowledge but also giving brilliant students sufficient motivation to emerge. After that stage, however, future top scientists must be chan -nelled into foreign universities, most of which are in the USA. In preparing for this migration of talent, Asian countries have been more strategic investing heavily into the preparation of undergrad -uate students to be selected and sent to top US uni -versities. European universities, in contrast cultivate the ambition to organize graduate educa -tion, particularly Phd education, in isolation. They actively practice endogamy, by selecting students from internal Master programmes, which in turn se -lect bright students from the Bachelor. With few exceptions, European postgraduate education in computer science is not globally competitive. If it were competitive we would see more students mi -grating from Asia and the rest of the world into Europe, instead of the USA, and we would see more students moving from the USA to Europe. In other words, Europe seems to play a game of lim -ited mobility Patterns of disciplinary mobility Where do top computer scientists come from, in terms of disciplinary affiliations? The data do not al -low a full-scale analysis, because we do not have control samples of scientists in related fields. There -fore the evidence should be interpreted in terms of overall mobility, rather than of specific discipline-to -discipline pathways. More than half of them gradu -ated either in mathematics or engineering, not com -puter science (see Table 5). The entry point of a scientific career is not in the specialised field, but in some of the underlying knowledge bases, either the -oretical or technical. Also interesting is the group of graduate students in physics who are recognized as key leaders in computer science Not surprisingly, computer science is number one at the level of Master degrees, a stage in which some focusing is required. Still, it covers only 34.1%of observable cases (including missing observations Finally, at the Phd stage the disciplinary affiliation of computer science dominates with 38.2%of cases The large number of missing observations may con -found the picture (e g. do scientists omit this infor -mation because it is considered obvious that their Phd is in computer science At the same time an interesting tentative interpre -tation can be offered. Computer science is a relative -ly young discipline. It has not the long scientific history of physics, mathematics, or chemistry Furthermore, it has an intrinsically dual nature: a Table 5. Distribution of Phd, Master and Bachelor degrees by discipline Phd degree Master degree Bachelor degree Number%Number%Number %Computer science 327 38.2 156 34.1 102 15.9 Engineering 116 13.6 113 24.7 165 25.7 Mathematics 90 10.5 75 16.4 165 25.7 Physics 25 2. 9 14 3. 1 45 7. 0 Statistics 9 1. 1 6 1. 3 3 0. 5 Psychology 8 0. 9 2 0. 4 9 1. 4 Linguistics, literature 4 0. 5 4 0. 9 Economics 2 0. 2 6 1. 3 Biology 4 0. 6 Chemistry 4 0. 6 Other or not specified 274 32.0 81 17.7 144 22.5 Total number of observations 855 457 641 European competitiveness: IT and long-term scientific performance Science and Public Policy August 2011 534 theoretical discipline, based on advanced research in mathematics, logics, computation, probability, and is also an application-oriented discipline, with a face towards the industrial and commercial feasibility of research results. Our data seem to suggest that com -puter science has been a gateway for cross-discipline mobility and cognitive recombination As a matter of fact, a great deal of cognitive re -combination seems to take place within this field Students may start with a degree in fundamental dis -ciplines (mathematics, physics) and find this new discipline as attractive as old fields for a brilliant career. Engineers do the same. Somewhat less repre -sented, students with a background in human scienc -es (literature, linguistics, psychology) and social sciences (economics) may combine their domain expertise with advanced computer science This interpretation is confirmed by Table 6, which shows the transition matrix between the Bachelor degree and the Phd. The a priori expectation is that there must be consistency between the two, leading to a matrix strongly concentrated along the principal diagonal. This is roughly confirmed for computer science (79.4%on the diagonal cell) but not for mathematics and engineering We therefore conclude that computer science is a field characterized by a high degree of disciplinary mobility, attracting competences from related fields In terms of the search regime framework, this amounts to saying that cognitive complementarity is a key element of the epistemic dynamics Again, the European higher education systems are less equipped to deal with this kind of cognitive complementarity. Disciplinary mobility in Phd edu -cation, for example, is encouraged not. The European tradition of Phd education is one of subordination to established disciplinary boundaries, rather than of open competition on the basis of research proposals Patterns of career mobility Top scientists are scarce and there is competition to attract them. Competition for scarce academic staff of top quality may be considered a layered game only highly ranked institutions can compete for very top people, and very top people carefully select their appointments in order to increase their opportunities to learn, to have good colleagues and students, to strengthen their CV and to increase their reputation Competition, however, is multidimensional Among people of the same stratum of quality, sec -ondary factors in selecting an affiliation (in addition to personal or family idiosyncratic considerations include the offer to develop a small but promising research group, or reputation in a niche of the disci -pline, or the availability of special research facilities or the like We computed the number of career changes in the total sample of scientists. These include any move from assistant professor to associate professor to full professor in different affiliations, or equiva -lent levels in other academic systems, for academi -cians, or appointments in different organizations for those working in industry and government. Promo -tion within the same organization is considered not a career move, even if there is geographical mobili -ty. Geographical mobility at the same level of career (a rare event) is considered not a career move either We have 1, 010 observations, for which we count -ed 4, 418 career moves, or 4. 36 per person. We clas -sified the 4, 418 career positions into four classes academic positions (n=3, 117 or 70.6%),industry positions (n=786 or 17.8%),consultancy positions n=332 or 7. 5%)and government positions n=183 or 4. 1 %Among many aspects revealed by the analysis of career paths, we particularly note the ranking of aca -demic institutions by the number of career moves that have involved them in the life of top scientists see Table 7). All top 15 institutions are based in the USA, with the exception of Toronto, which is Table 6. Transition matrix between disciplinary distribution of Bachelor and Phd degrees Bachelor degree Phd degree Mathematics Engineering Computer science Other disciplines No Phd Total Number%Number%Number%Number%Number%Number %Mathematics 47 8. 5 14 49.7 82 11.5 19 11.5 3 1. 8 165 100.0 Engineering 4 41.8 69 34.5 57 17.6 29 17.6 6 3. 6 165 100.0 Computer science-2. 0 2 79.4 81 15.7 16 15.7 3 2. 9 102 100.0 Total 51 19.7 85 50.9 220 14.8 64 14.8 12 2. 8 432 100.0 The search regime of computer science has been characterized by a turbulent rate of growth, proliferation dynamics and strong cognitive and institutional complementarity European competitiveness: IT and long-term scientific performance Science and Public Policy August 2011 535 ranked 15th. We find the data illuminating. It is not surprising that top universities try to attract top sci -entists, what is impressive is the extreme concentra -tion of this process. The first 15 universities account for 1051 moves, or 33.7%of the total number of academic moves in the entire careers of 1, 010 top scientists Even more impressive, the first four universities namely MIT, Stanford, Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon, account for 544 moves, or 17.4%of the to -tal. Assuming only one stop in one of these universi -ties per scientist, we find that almost 54%of all scientists in the sample, coming from all countries in the world, have spent at least a period of their career at just these four universities. Alternatively, assum -ing multiple career steps within these four universi -ties (admittedly a more realistic scenario) slightly changes the situation: at the extreme, if all average 4. 36 moves would have been made in the four uni -versities, we would still find a large group of 136 scientists, spending all their career in only four insti -tutions. Further examination, based on path analysis can elucidate the pattern better For the sake of our discussion, however, what is remarkable is the gravitational pull of highly prestig -ious universities on the career decisions of top scien -tists. We find this finding impressive and highly informative in terms of policy implications Another interesting finding refers to academia†industry mobility. While we are talking of scientists whose visibility is measured through citations in publications, we still see quite remarkable mobility within industry positions and between industry and other positions, mainly academia, and vice versa accounting for 17.8%of the total. Institutional systems that facilitate industry†academia mobility are clearly more attractive for top scientists in this field. Systems like those found in most European countries, where the career boundaries between aca -demia and industry are very rigid, are definitely less attractive Duration of career The analysis of CVS allows us to investigate the length of stay in each position. We limit the analysis to academic careers and investigate four career tran -sitions: from postdoctoral researcher to assistant professor (or researcher in other academic systems or equivalent), from assistant to associate, from as -sociate to full professor, from full professor to an -other affiliation in the same level. It should be noted that the number of observations greatly varies across transitions, a limitation that we cannot overcome given the information available Let us first examine the postdoctoral transition see Table 8). At this stage of their career junior sci -entists are bright, promising researchers, but not yet academic stars. Still their average stay in that posi -tion is only 1. 8 years (n=68. It seems that the aca -demic system is extremely competent at spotting future scientific leaders. This is in sharp contrast to the well-known phenomenon of the increased aver -age duration of postdoctoral positions in many academic fields, above all life sciences Subsequent career moves also follow a fast track these scientists become associate professors after five years, and full professors after another five years. On the average, they become full professors 12 years after obtaining a Phd, a remarkably fast career indeed. If they finish their Phd at age 22 or 23, they reach the summit in their early 30s An easy way to comment these data is to remem -ber that these are star scientists, who have usually produced outstanding contributions in their early years. This comment misses the point. First, precise -ly because great scientists are extremely productive in their early years, the academic system might ob -tain many results by postponing the promotions in the career. Second, we are observing average data Standard deviation informs us that even faster careers are observable. Indeed, for some people promotion to a higher level may occur within a year of the initial promotion The dynamics we observe are the result of intense competition among universities to attract the best young researchers, then the best young professors Without strong competition among universities Table 7 Ranking of top 15 affiliations (only academic positions) in total number of positions over career Institution Number MIT 174 Stanford university 166 University of California at Berkeley 102 Carnegie mellon University 102 University of Illinois 59 University of Maryland 58 Cornell University 52 University of Washington 45 University of Pennsylvania 44 Harvard university 44 Princeton university 44 University of Texas 44 University of Massachusetts 42 Brown University 41 University of Toronto 34 Note: universities not in USA are in italics Table 8 Descriptive statistics of duration of stay in academic career positions Duration of career steps Number Min Max Mean Std dev As postdoctoral researcher 68 0 7 1. 81 1. 499 As assistant professor 412 0 36 4. 89 5. 33 As associate professor 336 0 40 5. 39 4. 175 As full professor 348 0 44 11.51 9. 05 European competitiveness: IT and long-term scientific performance Science and Public Policy August 2011 536 career paths would be slower on average. It is be -cause competitors are ready to offer good prospects that all universities, subject to their budget con -straints and reputation layer, try to compete. On the other hand, top scientists have large opportunity costs: if they lose opportunities the value they lose is very large, so they will not accept offers that they consider below their opportunity cost. The higher the reputation, the larger the opportunity costs In other words, we may think of this career pat -tern as a dynamic equilibrium, in which all talented scientists are allocated to universities that make best use of their talent, and all universities allocate their budget in the best possible way. If top scientists re -ceive better offers, they move. If universities in -crease their reputation and have extra budget, they try to improve the quality of their potential candi -dates. Rapid career opportunities are the outcome of this dynamic Patterns of international mobility Finally, for a subsample of 786 scientists we have been able to track the countries in which they took permanent positions. On average, they moved in 1. 35 countries, a remarkable level of international mobility. Taking into account different employment positions, they changed 5. 32 times. It was not possi -ble to normalize these data by age or seniority, given several missing items of data. A crude approxima -tion is offered in Table 9, suggesting that on average they may change country for each 30 years of age and each 15 years of professional seniority It has been suggested that Europe and the USA differ structurally in the geographic mobility of in -novators (Crescenzi et al. 2007), insofar as US in -novators move more systematically towards cities where opportunities are larger, while Europeans try to develop innovations starting from their existing locations. Our data seem to suggest that in the com -puter sciences the pattern of geographic mobility has been an ingredient of long-term success Scientific productivity We offer a very rough descriptive analysis of the scientific production of top scientists. Admittedly there is room for further research here, which we did not pursue. In particular, the definition of scientific journals and conference proceedings that account for international publications is problematic, so that any external control on the data self-declared in the CVS would require a long and dedicated investigation We therefore simply registered the number of self-declared publications, from all categories com -bined, and carried out a crude comparison with ISI now Thomson Reuters) sources, by building up a Web of Science count of publications at the end of 2005. These cover only a subset of journals consid -ered important in the computer science community and do not include many top conferences, that are certainly crucial for scientific careers With all these caveats, it appears that on average top scientists self-declare almost 90 publications Taking into account the age distribution, so that many individuals in the top list are still in their 30s is a remarkable figure Other useful information can be obtained from Table 10. One-fifth of the top scientists also actively produce complete software and mention it in their CVS. In this case, on average four programs are mentioned. In addition, 137 scientists mention pa -tents in their CV, with an average number of 6. 57 Thus top scientists are also active producers of non -publication research output. This confirms the notion that institutional complementarity is an integral part of the search regime in computer science Discussion of findings and policy implications The hidden dimension of industrial competitiveness or why Europe lags behind Prevailing explanations of the European competi -tiveness gap in the IT industry, as already discussed are based on the lack of government initiative, small Table 10. Selected indicators of research output Number of observations Min Max Mean Std dev Publications Number of publications mentioned in CV 903 1 964 87.74 95.58 Number of ISI international papers 983 1 284 24.73 34.59 Other research output Software 204 1 56 4. 14 6. 081 Patents 137 1 47 6. 57 8. 342 Table 9. Indicators of international permanent mobility Number Min Max Mean Std dev Age 173 30 86 56.97 11.585 Number of different countries 786 1 6 1. 35 0. 686 Number of different employment positions after Phd 786 1 49 5. 32 4. 376 Number of different country mobility steps per year of age 163 0. 01 0. 11 0. 029 0. 017 Number of different country mobility steps per year of seniority 604 0. 02 2. 00 0. 078 0. 111 European competitiveness: IT and long-term scientific performance Science and Public Policy August 2011 537 market size, internal market fragmentation, and deep separation between the military sector and civilian research We suggest a complementary line of explanation For a large industry such as the computer industry an overall ecology of abstract ideas, engineering capabilities, technical skills, and entrepreneurial vi -sions, is needed. This ecology is nurtured by the in -teraction between universities and companies, and between companies and large (public and private customers. On the side of industry, what is crucial is the working of mechanisms that also permit large -scale experimentation, massively bottom-up parallel efforts, together with powerful selection mecha -nisms to foster the scaling up and growth of success -ful ideas. Universities can contribute to this ecology in two main ways: by producing top class research and education, and by pushing entrepreneurial ef -forts of researchers to the market. European coun -tries largely failed in both these directions. Contrary to the widely held assumption that Europe is good in science but poor in technology transfer (the so-called European paradox) we suggest that it is the weak -ness in the scientific base that is responsible, indi -rectly and in the long run, but in a powerful way, for the poor industrial performance Implications for higher education policy The interesting question is now whether this search regime has been compatible with the institutional features of European higher education in the relevant historical period, and why. The answer is negative A search regime characterized by a turbulent rate of growth, proliferation, and strong cognitive and insti -tutional complementarity requires an institutional system that favours career mobility, competition based on peer review, a competitive Phd education system, cross-disciplinary mobility and industry†academia mobility (Bonaccorsi, 2011. According to our data, top scientists move from the university that awarded their Bachelor degree to the USA, fight to enter top class universities as students, change affili -ations several times in their career, combine differ -ent disciplines around computer science, enjoy a rapid career, have extensive industry involvement as witnessed by research collaborations, as well as software development and patents Computer science has been based on a fierce competition for students and researchers worldwide Knowing how severe these demands are, top class universities fight to attract the best students and try to offer the best conditions to professors. But Euro -pean universities have not been attractive for top computer scientists and increasingly have also be -come less attractive for students. Among well -reputed old European universities, just a few have international visibility at the top These findings support the importance of foster -ing the reform agenda for European universities This will require dedicated efforts to build up globally competitive Phd programs, more transpar -ent and competitive recruitment procedures for re -searchers, larger mobility of researchers. The creation of the European Research Council has been an important step in this direction, but more is need -ed. The situation is rapidly changing, with these is -sues on top of the reform agenda in many European countries. However, there is also very recent evi -dence that the type of brain race that we have dis -covered in the computer science is becoming widespread (Wildavsky, 2010. This will continue to put pressure on European higher education systems in the near future Implications for innovation policy In the relevant historical period most European countries did not have (and many still do not have the institutional features to support the IT innova -tion ecology. Governments considered the comput -er industry a sector that could be supported with the old model of industrial policy: a sort of com -mand-and-control attitude, coupled with large fi -nancial support to national champions. They did not create the legal, administrative and financial conditions for large-scale entrepreneurial activity in high technology In historical terms, the innovation policies of large European countries have been influenced largely by the notion of national champions (Laredo and Mus -tar, 2001. A case in point was The french industrial policy towards the IT industry, which culminated in the Plan Calcul. As stated by Mounier-Kuhn (1994 209 The Plan Calcul, one of the most ambitious technological programmes of the Fifth Repub -lic, aimed at establishing an informatics indus -try that would guarantee France independence from the American manufacturers. The gov -ernment†s policy was to shape a †national championâ€, a company, preferably big (if necessary, formed by †inducing†several com -panies to merge) which the state would support through R&d grants and preferential purchases Although with less emphasis, these ideas have been shared by most governments for decades Despite the widely held assumption that Europe is good at science but poor at technology transfer (the so-called European paradox), it is the weakness in its scientific base that is responsible for its poor industrial performance European competitiveness: IT and long-term scientific performance Science and Public Policy August 2011 538 The search regime framework offers an explana -tion for such policy failures. As we have demon -strated, the competitiveness of the IT industry depends on ongoing, although complex and nonline -ar, relations between industry and the academic en -vironment. The search regime in computer science is based on a massive and fast effort of exploration of many competing directions, which are ex-ante ex -tremely uncertain and risky. No centralized system either in science and technology, could cope with such a regime The main tool for the transformation of ideas into commercial innovations has been the creation and rapid growth of start-up companies. They constitute the industrial counterpart of a turbulent and prolifer -ating search regime in science. It must be said that within a broad historical perspective, as the literature examined above clearly shows, the entrepreneurial process of creating new firms from research in the IT industry started very early in the USA, in the 1950s and 1960s. The firms created in these periods had to survive in a harsh competitive environment to access the risk capital market and eventually the stock exchange market, and to discover the recipe to combine cutting edge technology with manufactur -ing and marketing skills. When the two radical inno -vations of the PC (in the 1980s) and the internet (in the 1990s) were introduced, the US system already had several decades of trial-and-error, failures and institutional learning on which it was possible to capitalize. The entrepreneurial process started much later in Europe, partly because of the lack of compe -tition, partly because of the poor ecology of ideas Luckily enough, the recognition of the importance of young innovative firms in the industrial dynamics has been reached quite late in European innovation policy, but is established now firmly in the policy debate. The recent EU Industrial R&d Investment Scoreboard states clearly that †the EU€ s innovation gap is a consequence of its industrial structure in which new firms fail to play a significant role in the dynamics of the industry, especially in the high-tech sectors European commission, 2010: 51 Our findings confirm quite neatly the need for a shift of policy focus, from merely supporting industrial research, perhaps with large involvement of large but not globally competitive) European firms, to the creation of framework conditions for rapid growth of young innovative firms Implications for productivity and the role of services There is a large policy debate in Europe on the caus -es of the growth deficit with respect to the USA There is also agreement on the role of a large productivity gap in the service sector, as demon -strated by the Brookings Institution (Triplett and Bosworth, 2004) and recently by the KLEMS project (Timmer et al. 2010). ) When we come to the explanation of the productivity gap in the service sector, one commonly held view is that regulation plays a key role. Following the influential analysis by the OECD (Nicoletti and Scarpetta, 2003; Con -way and Nicoletti, 2006) it has been suggested that strict product market regulations and lack of regula -tory reforms underlie the poor productivity of some European countries, particularly in ICT-related sec -tors. Strictly associated with product market regula -tion, labour market regulation is called into play, as flexible labour markets in the USA facilitate the re -deployment of the workforce and then the adoption of innovation much more than in Europe We suggest a complementary interpretation, but one which reverses the causal path. It is because the service sector in the USA started to experiment with IT very early, in the 1960s and 1970s, that it adopted IT on a large scale in the 1990s. In turn, it was because IT immediately deployed large gains in the efficiency of operations that a steady increase in productivity was made compatible with accepta -ble work conditions in an advanced society, without strong political opposition to liberal reforms. In fact, in the service sector the productivity may in -crease either because a process of automation is implemented in the back office, or because there is an intensification of effort in the front office. The former invariably requires skillful implementation of IT, while the latter may be obtained by increas -ing the working hours or the physical effort of workers and/or by lowering real wages. There is historical evidence from the literature discussed in this paper, that US companies in the IT industry started to work with large service firms as potential customers as early as the 1960s. While the most famous developments refer to the airline reservation system (the SABRE project developed in the period 1957†1964), there are many other less known ex -amples in the banking, insurance, wholesale, retail transport or logistics industries. Why are these early experiences historically important? The reason lies again in the kind of institutional complementarity we find in this search regime: problems created by challenging requirements in the user sector generate a feedback on the creation of new ideas, and new ideas need a long period of incubation, adaptation and implementation in companies to deliver their full potential over productivity. In turn, the de -ployment of new technology in services is inter -twined with organizational changes, and only the combination between these two dimensions delivers large productivity gains (Brynjolfsson and Hitt 2000 Our conjecture (admittedly, only that is that US service companies were ready to jump on the new waves of IT associated to the PC and the internet ex -actly because they had experienced already the early benefits of the technology, while for European ser -vice companies the learning curve, in the same peri -od, was much less favourable. Consistent with this European competitiveness: IT and long-term scientific performance Science and Public Policy August 2011 539 conjecture is the robust finding that US multination -als exhibit systematically higher productivity level than European ones (Bloom et al. 2007). ) If this con -jecture were to be confirmed, then the policy impli -cation would be somewhat less simplistic than just placing more flexibility in the labour market Notes 1. The EU Report includes STMICROELECTRONICS as incorporated in Switzerland, with an R&d expenditure of â 1. 065 billion. The company is owned, in fact, also by public shareholders from Italy and France. In the 2010 Scoreboard it is registered as in -corporated in Netherlands 2. Citeseer was developed in 1997 at the NEC Research Insti -tute, Princeton, NJ. The service then moved to the College of Information sciences and Technology, Pennsylvania State University in 2003. 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