Technological diversity in collaborative projects: insights into European research policy

Technology diversity is defined as the ability to perform research and development in different technological domains. We investigate the degree of technological diversity in the European regions, focusing on two main drivers: the regional capacity to obtain funding from the 7(th) Framework Programme, and the degree of regional network centrality in collaborative research. Our results support the hypothesis that regional capacity to access European funding and obtain a central position in collaborative networks fosters technological diversity in European regions. We also find that the high network centrality in a research collaboration network is correlated to a reduced FP7 effect on technological diversity.