Abstract: DeepTech companies have attracted much attention in Europe because of their problem-oriented, technology-integrated, physical product development, and being at the core of the innovation ecosystem. Based on this, the following studies are conducted: firstly, the concept of "deep technology" is analyzed; Secondly, one of the four trends in Europe to promote the development of deep technology enterprises is to provide funds to support the four major areas, academic institutions to collaborate to empower deep technology enterprises, and venture capital institutions to fully participate in the support of deep technology enterprises and integrate resource advantages to promote the formation of multiple deep technology clusters; Finally, the relevant thoughts on promoting the development of deep science and technology enterprises in China.
Deeptech is known as the fourth wave of innovation after the industrial revolution, the information revolution and the digital revolution. Deepin technology enterprises have four complementary characteristics: adhering to problem-oriented, focusing on technology integration, developing physical products, and being at the core of the innovation ecosystem, and have become a "new engine" driven by innovation. Deep-tech enterprises are enterprises that provide disruptive technology solutions or products based on cutting-edge scientific research, with both futuristic and pragmatic characteristics, and are the key force to solve major human problems and represent the direction of future innovation, and are at the forefront of global innovation and venture capital. In recent years, many measures have been taken in Europe to promote the development of deep technology enterprises from the EU level and the national level, and relevant measures are worth learning.
1. Conceptual analysis of "deep technology".
In the face of the challenges brought about by the new round of scientific and technological revolution represented by new artificial intelligence, life science and technology, blockchain and 5G, as well as the accelerating changes in the global innovation pattern, the geopolitical pattern of the first-class system and the development trend of scientific and technological innovation, major countries in the world are looking for breakthroughs in scientific and technological innovation and seizing opportunities for scientific and technological development, especially the development of deep technology. Deep technology is a concept of development and evolution, and a consensus has been formed at home and abroad. Based on this, this paper argues that the technologies that are being deployed at the national level and in various provinces and cities and related fields to future industries belong to deep technology.
1) "Deepin technology" has not yet formed a unified definition.
At present, there is no unified definition of deepin technology at home and abroad. Wang Jian translated deepscience as "deep technology" and defined it as deep science and technology that absorbs the crystallization of human scientific and technological wisdom, condenses the essence of hard and soft technology, and has an international spillover effect, pointing out that it has four characteristics: high development threshold, long research and development time, innovation based on the physical world, and difficult to be replicated. Chen translated deeptech as "deep technology" and defined "deep technology industry" as six industries: artificial intelligence, intelligent computing, quantum technology, biotechnology, clean energy, and advanced materials. The Cambridge Dictionary defines deeptech as a business or research field that involves the use of advanced science and technology, such as areas such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, or advanced biotechnology, to provide solutions to complex problems. The 2023 European DeepTech Report defines "DeepTech" as a new scientific and engineering breakthrough that enters the enterprise for the first time and is oriented to the market, and proposes that Deepin Technology has the characteristics of high uncertainty at the beginning of R&D, high-level R&D support during development, high novelty of products, high influence of industries and regions, and large financing needs.
2) DeepTech is an evolving concept.
Today's deep technology is not necessarily tomorrow's deep technology. Once the technology or product is applied and popularized with the expansion of the company's scale, the once deep technology will become a conventional technology. For example, conventional technologies that have been applied and popularized from the Internet, automobiles, electricity to airplanes, etc., also originate from the research and development of deep technology. When a technology company grows from a start-up to a large listed company, and its products have been put into the market and even popularized, the relevant technology is no longer a deep technology, and may develop into a conventional technology. Compared with conventional technology, Deepin Technology has another dimension that is easy to distinguish: the initial R&D stage of Deepin Technology is longer, and it takes longer to complete the whole process of "creative idea-proof-of-concept-product design-small-scale test-pilot test-market introduction-mass production". Therefore, the demand for R&D financing in Deepin Technology is greater.
3) Deep technology is a technology that overlaps with the relevant fields of the future industry.
The future industry is an industry with a low degree of development maturity but great development potential, a high dependence on basic research and original innovation, and an industry formed by disruptive technologies and new products and new formats that lead major changes. The United States, Europe, Japan and other countries and regions have proposed to plan new tracks for future industries, including industries that overlap with deep technology. In this regard, China is not far behind: "The Communist Party of China on the formulation of the 14th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development and the 235-year long-term goals of the proposal" clearly put forward to organize the implementation of the future industry incubation and acceleration plan, and the "Beijing Municipal Implementation Plan for Promoting the Innovation and Development of Future Industries", "Shanghai to build a future industrial innovation highland to develop and expand the future industrial cluster action plan" and "Shenzhen Municipal People's Opinions on the development and expansion of strategic emerging industrial clusters and the cultivation and development of future industries" and other regional documents have clearly proposed to accelerate the layout of future industries. The science and technology in the related fields of the future industry is a technology that is still in the gestation stage based on original cutting-edge technologies, breakthroughs in disruptive technologies and major social development needs, and has attracted the attention and recognition of scientists, entrepreneurs and the investment community. Therefore, this study believes that deepin technology includes the subdivisions involved in the direction of future information, future health, future manufacturing, future energy, future materials, and future space.
2. Trends in promoting the development of deep technology enterprises in Europe.
Through the support of public policies at the EU and national levels, Europe has made key investments in four major areas, including new artificial intelligence, future computing, new energy, and space technology, and has created some representative deep technology enterprises, and due to the collaborative innovation of academic institutions, it has attracted the full participation of venture capital institutions, prompting the formation of some deep science and technology clusters in relevant European countries.
1) Provide funds to focus on supporting deep technology enterprises in four major fields.
In order to promote the development of deep technology, the European Union, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and other countries have formulated deep technology development plans and provided substantial funding for deep technology enterprises, especially start-ups (see Table 1). Taking France as an example, in January 2023, France** proposed the goal of creating 100 unicorns and 500 deep tech start-ups every year by 2030. In order to implement the "deep technology" plan implemented in 2019, France will invest an additional 65 million euros in deep technology enterprises in the form of **, subsidies, etc., and invest 27.5 billion euros to support 17 maturation projects.
Table 1 European Union Major European countries' funding for deep technology enterprises.
Data**: European Deep Tech Report (2023 Edition).
At present, European deep technology companies focus on four core emerging fields: new artificial intelligence, future computing, new energy, and space technology. Table 2 shows some of the subdivisions of specific fields.
Table 2 Representative enterprises in the four major fields of deep technology in Europe.
Data**: European Deep Tech Report (2023 Edition).
2) Collaboration between academic institutions empowers deep technology enterprises.
European deep technology companies have close cooperation with universities and laboratories, and many related technologies originate from the laboratories of universities and research institutions, according to the global entrepreneurship and venture capital information analysis platform dealroomAccording to CO statistics, as of 2022, more than 400 technologies in the field of deep technology in Europe come from universities and laboratories. As of 2023, the total market capitalization of the seven highest-valued deep tech companies in Europe is around $33 billion, and all of these companies have received more than $200 million in venture capital, and two of them have even received more than $1 billion. After development, they were separated from the original academic institutions and moved towards professional market-oriented operation (see Table 3). For example, the cybersecurity technology company Darktrace was incubated by the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, the artificial intelligence biotechnology company Nanopore was incubated by the research team of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, the intelligent sensor technology company Sensorion was incubated by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, and the robotics company Agilerobots was incubated from the German Aerospace Center. It can be seen that the in-depth cooperation between European deep technology enterprises, especially start-ups, and academic institutions has become the best example of academic institutions empowering deep technology enterprises and transforming scientific and technological achievements in related fields into the market.
Table 3 Valuation table of European deep technology companies associated with universities and research institutions.
Data**: European Deep Tech Report 2023
3) Venture capital institutions fully participate in the support of deep technology enterprises.
In recent years, European deep technology companies have shown strong momentum in their development and demonstrated resilience in volatile capital markets, which is favored by venture capitalists. According to the data, European deep tech companies receive about 10 billion euros of venture capital every year, accounting for about a quarter of the total venture capital in Europe, and the investment received by deep tech start-ups in the four major areas shown in Table 2 has increased year by year since 2016, from $400 million to $4.2 billion in 2023, becoming the most favored focus area for venture capital (see Figure 1).
Data**: European Deep Tech Report 2023
Figure 1 Venture capital investment in deep tech start-ups in four major sectors in Europe in recent years.
The focus on deep tech ventures by venture capital firms has also led to cross-border collaborations with European investors, such as UK-based Amadeus Capitalpartners and Austrian-based ApexVentures, which have jointly launched a new €80 million venture capital investment**, AmadeusApex Technology Alliance**, which has raised €28 million in initial funding as of 2023. Its investment strategy is as follows: first, it aims to invest in deep-tech seed companies in Germany, Austria and Switzerland (DACH region), because the region has top universities and a large developer base, and the introduction of deep-tech funds is still in a depression; The second is to focus on early-stage companies with unique technologies in the fields of artificial intelligence, quantum computing, mobility and outer space, and robotics, and invest 1 million to 1.5 million euros in each start-up, such as the first investment of 1 million euros in the German space start-up OKAPIORBITS; The third is to take the DACH region as the core, and gradually radiate to Poland, Denmark, the Netherlands and other European regions. The joint venture hopes to leverage the experience and expertise of both Austria and the UK in the relevant fields to expand the scope of investment of the joint venture, and in doing so, to expand the influence of the parent company in their respective countries and in Europe.
4) Integrate resource advantages to promote the formation of multiple in-depth science and technology clusters.
At the end of the 80s of the 20th century, the industrial clusters and science and technology parks of developed countries such as the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Germany began to evolve into science and technology clusters that gather resources, and science and technology clusters attracted huge amounts of capital and resources, and were valued by countries around the world. Since 2017, when WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) published a special article on the Global Innovation Index Report, "The World's Largest Science and Technology Clusters and Their Rankings", science and technology clusters have attracted much attention. Due to the uncertainty at the beginning of its development and the large financing demand, deep technology enterprises face huge technical and capital risks in the process from concept to marketization, and the cluster development model can effectively reduce these risks.
According to data from the European Deep Tech Report (2023 Edition), by the end of 2022, 16 countries in Europe have promoted the formation of major deep technology clusters through the integration of national research institutions, well-known universities and core areas of scientific and technological innovation. In the seven years between 2016 and 2022, the country with the highest amount of financing was the United Kingdom ($28.7 billion) and the lowest was Portugal (3$3.8 billion); Switzerland (35%) has the highest proportion of investment in deep technology clusters in the country, and Ireland (11%) has the lowest share. Combined with the total investment in the country and the proportion of cluster investment in the country, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Switzerland and Finland have all formed relatively representative deep science and technology clusters (see Table 4), and these deep science and technology clusters have shown strong influence of cluster development model in their own countries and even in the whole European region.
Table 4 Investment amount and proportion of deep technology clusters in Europe from 2016 to 2022.
Data**: European Deep Tech Report (2023 Edition).
3. Thoughts on promoting the development of deep science and technology enterprises in China.
Since the emergence of the concept of "deep technology" in 2015, it has quickly attracted the attention of European and American countries** and the investment community. Since 2021, Europe has continuously released the "European Deepin Technology Report (2021 Edition)", "European Deepin Technology Report (2022 Edition)" and "European Deepin Technology Report (2023 Edition)", which are released in January every year, and the statistics are as of the end of December of the previous year. From the perspective of administrative scope, the series includes both EU-level and country-level data; From the institutional level, it covers relevant data of **, universities, research institutions, and enterprises; From the perspective of data types, there are not only investment amount data, but also patent data, as well as deep technology enterprise ranking data. It can be seen that "deep technology" has been incorporated into the discourse system of European innovation policy, which has received extensive attention and has become an important support for promoting the overall efficiency of the European scientific and technological innovation system.
In China, the concept of "deep technology" is generally missing in various scientific and technological innovation policy and regulatory documents at all levels, and there are few treatises on "deep technology" in related research, and there are 13 data (as of January 20, 2024) in the CNKI database with "deep technology" as the keyword, and only 1 is strongly related to deep technology enterprises**. The author suggests that "deep technology" should be included in the discourse system of innovation policy, research and plan the action plan for the development of deep technology enterprises, organize and coordinate the construction of innovation consortiums of deep technology enterprises, build a communication platform between entrepreneurs and investors, help deep technology enterprises smooth financing channels, attract venture capital, and promote the investment community to strengthen investment in deep technology enterprises. Relying on national platforms such as Zhongguancun Forum, Financial Street Forum, and China International Service Fair, the Summit and Annual Meeting of Deepin Technology Enterprises will be held to bring together well-known scientists, entrepreneurs, investors, and technology transfer experts to help Deepin Technology start-ups connect with various resources and achieve innovative development.
In view of the fact that most of the leading enterprises in the future industry originate from universities and scientific research institutes, and the science and technology in the related fields of the future industry are highly overlapped with deep technology, it is necessary to vigorously promote the collaboration between deep technology enterprises and universities and scientific research institutes, and increase the investment of deep technology enterprises in basic research and applied basic research. On the basis of sorting out the existing scientific research resources, China should establish a database of in-depth scientific and technological achievements that can be transformed, introduce and cultivate entrepreneurial scholars, grasp the commercial value of a certain academic scientific research, and help screen out research results with commercial transformation potential.
The professional think tanks related to science and technology can give full play to the role of "the judge of the direction of science and technology development", track the development direction of deep science and technology in Europe and the United States, and put forward specific and actionable countermeasures and suggestions to promote the development of China's deep science and technology enterprises in combination with the future industries of the domestic layout. The compilation of city reports and international comparison reports is to promote the open cooperation of international and regional deep science and technology enterprises, and effectively promote the development of deep science and technology enterprises in China.
Author: Research Group of Beijing Academy of Science and Technology.
This article is originally published in the first issue of "Science and Technology Think Tank" in 2024.
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