The goal of the assignment was to understand the potential impacts that the concept of Open Strategic Autonomy (OSA) is likely to have on the EU's small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The study looked into the benefits of OSA for local supply chains (which are mostly made up of SMEs), proceeding in two steps. First, it explored current OSA-related policies at both the EU and national levels, highlighting the current best practices, risks and shortcomings. And secondly, it provided recommendations on designing policies aimed at ensuring that SMEs can obtain the maximum advantage from the OSA strategy. The project was divided into four main tasks:
- Task 1 on the development of the conceptual framework, where OSA is formally defined and a theory of change of its impact on SMEs is developed on the basis of a literature review;
- Task 2, which involves first a quantitative analysis on the role and positioning of SMEs in strategic ecosystems, and a qualitative analysis of the impacts of OSA on SMEs, based on desk research and interviews with key stakeholders and sectoral experts;
- Task 3 concerns the structuring and compilation of a policy inventory of actions that have been undertaken to develop OSA; and
- Task 4 will tie the three previous tasks to provide policy recommendations for ensuring that SMEs can benefit as much as possible from the EU's OSA strategy.
PPMI has been involved particularly in Task 2, where it analysed the supply chain of key technologies in two ecosystems:
- For the transport-mobility-automotive ecosystem, it analysed the supply chain for batteries and fuel cells
- For the digital ecosystem, it analysed the supply chain for cloud and edge computing, AI and cybersecurity
The policy recommendations for Task 4 built in particular on the analyses of the key technologies under Task 2.