of Photonics Technologies: the European Perspective The Leverage Effect

The Leverage Effect of Photonics Technologies: the European Perspective
4.1
Introduction
One of the main objectives of the study was to assess the leverage of
photonics technologies to the broader European economy 10 . The indication
of the importance of photonics technologies to the European
industry and society at large is of high relevance to the development of
policy to support photonics research and innovation.
To provide an indication of the leverage of photonics, an experimental
method is used to indicate the overall impact of photonics on the rest
of the European industry. In this method, Photonics leverage is defined
in the following way:
The proportional contribution photonics makes to the value of an
end product or service, either by enabling/enhancing the productivity
of the manufacturing process, or by providing/enhancing functionality
in the end device, without which the end product would
not be competitive.
Thus leverage is a reflection of the dependency of a product (or service)
on photonics technology. In other words: if photonics technologies were
not available, what proportion of the functionality of the end product
would be reduced? This dependency is based on a survey among 42
photonics experts, using a semi-quantitative scale, looking at 8 enabled
manufacturing industries and 11 final markets and their dependency on
the six photonics technologies identified (see 4.2). Having estimated the
contribution of photonics to an industry and market, it can be quantified
in a variety of ways. Here we used two main measures:
1. The photonics market leverage (PML) which is the size of the market
affected i.e. the economic market value of photonics enabled manufacturing
industries and final markets, that are impacted by photonic
technologies, either by improving its productivity or creating a
new or better product (or service) with additional functionality.
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10
Note that a distinction is made between the photonics industry, the photonics-enabled industry
and final markets. The photonics industry is discussed in chapter 2, as photonics technologies are
core to this industry and leverage of photonics is considered at 100%.