{"id":111099,"date":"2025-01-27T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-27T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/la-competition-technologique-internationale\/"},"modified":"2025-06-16T11:09:13","modified_gmt":"2025-06-16T09:09:13","slug":"la-competition-technologique-internationale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/la-competition-technologique-internationale\/","title":{"rendered":"International technological competition"},"content":{"rendered":"
In a world marked by fierce competition between Western countries and emerging countries such as China, industry is set to play an important role \u2014 a point underlined in the Draghi Report on European Competitiveness <\/a>in 2024. McKinsey\u2019s Global Institute report <\/a>focuses on a category of industries which are very likely to profoundly changing businesses on a global scale, as well as society, and which it describes as \u201ccompetition arenas\u201d.<\/em><\/h6>
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Bradley<\/span> Chris et alii,<\/em> The Next Big Arenas of Competition<\/a>,<\/em> McKinsey Global Institute, October 2024, 213 p., and Wong-Leung<\/span> Jennifer, Robin<\/span> Stephan and Cave<\/span> Danielle, ASPI\u2019s Two-decade Critical Technology Tracker: The Rewards of Long-term Research Investment<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> ASPI (Australian Strategic Policy Institute), August 2024, 72 p.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n \n \n <\/a>\n <\/div>\n \"\"\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

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These industrial sectors have two characteristics: they account for a very large share of the growth in industrial production; and the market shares held by companies in each of them often change hands. This shows that they are the focus of intense competition generated by new \u2018clusters\u2019 of technologies and business models, with high levels of capital mobilisation and substantial investment in R&D activities. McKinsey notes, for example, that among the top 100 companies by market capitalisation in 2005, only 46 will remain in 2020. In this top 100, <\/em>the other 54 had been replaced by companies belonging, for half of them, to new technological sectors that are markers of the competition arenas. It is therefore important to understand how they operate in order to anticipate their potential emergence over the next 15 years. That is the aim of this report.<\/p>\n

In the first two chapters, it turns the spotlight on 12 competition arenas that have emerged over the period 2005-2020 on a global scale (the sample comprises 3,000 companies): cloud computing services, software, e-commerce, biopharmaceuticals, electronics and semiconductors, and electric vehicles. In 2005, companies in these sectors accounted for just 9% of the profits of the industry as a whole, but this figure had risen to 50% by 2020. Their R&D spending was already high in the United States (equivalent to 62% of the total for industrial companies) and had increased slightly by 2020 (65%), particularly in the semi-conductor, biopharmaceutical and software sectors.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n

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These highly competitive sectors have a number of specific characteristics: business models and technologies change rapidly and in stages; companies investing in those sectors are very often outsiders, and were not present in these sectors in 2005; capital and jobs are highly concentrated (74% of the total capitalisation of companies in the sector in 2020 was held by those with capital of more than 50 billion US dollars, compared with 47% in other industrial sectors); companies can become industrial giants. In 2020, eight of the top ten companies ranked in order of size of capitalisation (in a range from 500 to 1,700 billion US dollars) were in sectors with strong technological dynamics.<\/p>\n

Based on these findings and criteria, McKinsey identified, in its third chapter, 18 sectors that would be potential competition arenas in 2040. Together, they would represent sales of between US$29,000 billion and US$48,000 billion for companies, and profits of between US$2,000 billion and US$6,000 billion. It also estimates that companies in those sectors would contribute 10%-16% of global gross domestic product (up from 4% in 2022). The list of emerging sectors includes: autonomous vehicles (but in shared services), space (infrastructure and associated services), batteries, video games, systems using artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, biotechnology products, nuclear power plants and, finally, anti-obesity drugs (a serious American disease).<\/p>\n

The McKinsey study has the advantage of proposing criteria for identifying the industrial sectors that are likely to emerge by 2040. However, the reader is left wanting insofar as it does not envisage any real technical breakthroughs in the competition arenas of the future, with the exception of those that AI could bring. It is true that the history of technology shows that breakthroughs rarely have a rapid industrial impact, semiconductors being an exception.[1]<\/a><\/sup> It is also worth noting that the report does not take into account the role that financial aid injected by certain federal agencies into company R&D has played, and will no doubt play in the future, in the United States \u2014 a role that has greatly helped to support their competitiveness in the semi-conductor and IT sectors.<\/p>\n

The McKinsey report points out that in the list of the most competitive companies present in the competition arenas, a large number of them were Chinese in 2020, whereas they were not in 2005. A report published in 2024 by the ASPI <\/a>(Australian Strategic Policy Institute), an Australian think-tank advising the government on defence and technological issues, confirms this observation.<\/p>\n

By taking into account the research work published over the period 2003-2023 in the 10% of the world\u2019s most cited scientific articles, about 64 \u201ccritical technologies\u201d in strategic sectors (including energy, aerospace, electronics, robotics, AI, critical materials, quantum technologies and biotechnologies), the ASPI establishes a ranking of the scientific competitiveness of the most developed countries. It is an indicator of their ability to develop new technologies, and highlights a real turning point in global technological leadership over the last 20 years.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the countries of the Indo-Pacific region, led by China, are making significant inroads into the ranking. The United States was the leader in 57 of the 64 strategic technology sectors in 2003-2007, and China in just three; but it will be the leader in 57 in 2019-2023. India is also making inroads at the top of this ranking; the United States and a few European countries (France in just three sectors, nuclear waste treatment, magnetic and gravitational sensors) are still present, but in a lower position. However, the ASPI ranking is probably biased in the defence-related sectors, since public and private laboratories in Western countries have severely restricted the publication of their work in these sectors over the last twenty years.<\/p>\n

The two McKinsey and ASPI studies complement each other, but with geopolitics exacerbating technological competition, it is becoming more difficult to find relevant indicators for assessing the technological performance of the world\u2019s countries.<\/p>\n\n

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    Smil<\/span> Vaclav, Invention and Innovation: A Brief History of Hype and Failure,<\/em> Cambridge, Mass.: MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Press, 2023. \u2191<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    In a world marked by fierce competition between Western countries and emerging countries such as China, industry is set to play an important role \u2014 a point underlined in the Draghi Report on European Competitiveness in 2024. McKinsey\u2019s Global Institute report focuses on a category of industries which are very likely to profoundly changing businesses … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":101447,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"both","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":301,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[131],"tags":[210],"keyword":[869,1023,863,1306,1287,949,851,957],"class_list":["post-111099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-read-seen-heard","tag-science-et-technique-en","keyword-concurrence-en","keyword-competitivite-en","keyword-entreprises-en","keyword-technologie-de-pointe-en","keyword-economie-industrielle-en","keyword-industrie-en","keyword-economie-internationale-en","keyword-recherche-et-developpement-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111099"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112154,"href":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111099\/revisions\/112154"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111099"},{"taxonomy":"keyword","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/keyword?post=111099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}