It doesn’t exist a single authoritative methodology to define high-tech industries.
The organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) identifies high-tech industries based on a comparison industry R&D intensities, a calculation dividing industry R&D expenditures by industry sales. Industries identified as high-tech are: aerospace, pharmaceuticals, computers and office machinery, communication equipment, and scientific (medical, precision, and optical) instruments.They are considered as science-based industries that manufacture products while performing above-average levels of R&D. In much policy analysis it is common to use the terms 'high-technology' or 'knowledge intensive industries' in a somewhat loose way, as though in fact they are both meaningful and interchangeable terms. But we ought to remember that the term ‘high technology’ is a rather recent invention, and that its meaning is far from clear.
The standard approach in this area rests on a classification developed by the OECD in the mid-1980s. The OECD distinguished between industries in terms of R&D intensities, with those (such as ICT or pharmaceuticals) spending more than 4% of turnover being classified as high-technology, those spending between 1% and 4% of turnover (such as vehicles or chemicals) being classified as medium-tech, and those spending less than 1% (such as textiles or food) as 'low tech'.High-tech can be defined according to three different approaches: ? the sector approach looks at the high-tech manufacturing sector, medium high-tech manufacturing sector, and high-tech knowledge-intensive service sector, focusing on employment, earnings and economic indicators as shown in Table 1. ? the product approach simply considers whether a product is high-tech or not and examines trade in high-tech products; ? the patent approach distinguishes high-tech patents from others and also defines what biotechnology patents are.
In general terms, Knowledge Intensive Business Services are mainly concerned with providing knowledge-intensive inputs to the business processes of other organizations, including private and public sector clients. Miles et al. (1995) identified three principal characteristics of KIBS:1. They rely heavily upon professional knowledge;2. They either are themselves primary sources of information and knowledge or they use knowledge to produce intermediate services for their clients' production processes;3.
They are of competitive importance and supplied primarily to business.This indicator is calculated as share of exports of all high technology products of total exports. High Technology products are defined as the sum of the following products: Aerospace, Computers – office machines, Electronics – telecommunications, Pharmacy, Scientific instruments, Electrical machinery, Chemistry, Non-electrical machinery, Armament. The total exports for the EU do not include the intraEU trade.
