Exploring high-tech specializations with the use of metadata: evidence from the metropolitan clusters of Paris and Toronto

High-tech companies, sectors and hubs are recognized as important drivers of economic growth, innovation and productivity; however, the conventional administrative datasets and industry codes have proved to be often inadequate when it comes to properly detect and analyse new technological domains. In this paper, we propose a simple approach and suggest a promising data source that can be used to identify the most relevant high-tech specializations existing in a certain region, such as an innovative metropolitan cluster; importantly, it highlights the emerging complementarities between technological domains, which can represent the starting point for cooperation and synergies between companies presenting different core activities but also some degree of common knowledge. Hence, this unconventional mapping of a technological landscape can provide useful information to companies, and also to policymakers who intend to support high-tech businesses and sectors. To implement the proposed approach, we use first-hand information on firms’ main products, markets and technologies and implement the tool of network analysis, which we apply to two particularly promising technological hubs, namely, the metropolitan clusters of Paris and Toronto.