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Indicators Applicability to reflect socioeconomic data strongly related to the underlying industrial structure. Distribution of total business R&D in biotechnology by application Public R&D expenditures in biotech as a percentage of total public expenditures on R&D - gives us an idea of how much targeting might be going on. Venture capital investment + Data - Distribution of R&D by application is a good indicator of market expectations towards certain sub-sectors and their future development potential but alone it might not provide an indication of current market size and value. - Public R&D expenditures are a good indication of national commitment and policy support. However they are no direct indication of the actual market -, product value, investment or employment potential. Venture capital investment is a good indication of current socio-economic sectoral position signalling investment trust and quick revenue/turnaround Socio-economic data The Blue Biotechnology sector is not an independent statistical sector and up until now no official statistics have been released on the number of companies, GVA or employment figures for the sector. In Annex 2 (Towards a valuation of the Blue Biotechnology sector) it is estimated that the European Blue Biotechnology sector would make up 2-5% of European biotechnology in terms of revenue. Estimating the size of the industry in terms of number of employees is a more complex process. In the European Union over 99% of all enterprises are SMEs that employ 66.5% of European workforce35. While the share of small and medium sized enterprises varies by sectors on average SMEs tend to make up over 93-99% of companies active in one particular industry. Taking into consideration that biotechnology as well as Blue Biotechnology would have a high share of SMEs and would be characterised by a rather even distribution of workforce (as in number of employees) it can be assumed that similarly to revenues, the number of employees would also make up 2-5% of biotechnology as a whole. A 2013 industry report found that there were about 1 799 private biotechnology companies in Europe36. Mirroring the 2-5% size comparison used on revenues onto employment implies that there would be 36-90 private companies active in Blue Biotechnology in the European Union. The mirroring exercise however omits the fact that Blue Biotechnology as an industry is still in development and has the potential to have a high number of start-up and spin-off companies. Therefore, in order to verify and cross-check the primary estimates that Blue Biotechnology would have between 36-90 private companies in Europe we have looked at the stakeholder database compiled at the inception stage of this study. The stakeholder database lists close to 300 European Blue Biotechnology stakeholders, including private enterprises. It is meant as a representative sample of the industry. An analysis of the stakeholder database identified 97 enterprises out of which 71 (73%) are small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) (less than 250 employees) and 26 35 European Commission (2013); Annual Report on European SMEs 2012/2013, http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/sme/facts-figures-analysis/performance-review/files/supportingdocuments/2013/annual-report-smes-2013_en.pdf 36 Ernst & Young; Biotechnology Industry report 2013 18 Study in support of Impact Assessment work on Blue Biotechnology

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