of Photonics Technologies: the European Perspective The Leverage Effect

The Leverage Effect of Photonics Technologies: the European Perspective
7.4
Also focus on large sectors
where photonics has the
potential to enhance
competitiveness
One of the most important outcomes of the leverage assessment is that
photonics also creates significant leverage in sectors where the dependency
on photonics for their competitiveness is at present minimal. Retail
and healthcare show significant but minimal dependency, but due to
their size the overall leverage is high. Over 50% of the calculated leverage
of photonics to the European economy is due to this combination
of small dependency and large size.
Traditionally, focus of policy is on application areas where the absolute
leverage is high. This outcome leads to the following recommendations:
● Subsequent to areas where the application of photonics has a major
impact, attention also needs to be given to large sectors where the
current penetration of photonics is limited (e.g. retail and healthcare).
The resulting leverage could be large.
7.5
Establish a specific policy
to support SMEs
The study shows that SMEs dominate the company size portfolio. The
dynamic character of the market is suitable for flexible and innovative
small companies enabling emerging opportunities to be rapidly exploited,
but the innovative character of the sector also requires access to
financial capital. Moreover, due to the high tech character of the indus-
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