Market Mapping for Evidence-Based Policy Making

RVO (Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland, i.e. Netherlands Enterprise Agency) is an executive agency of the government that promotes international trade, innovation and sustainability. It is part of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy and provides expertise on subsidies, patents, and sustainable solutions and informs about financial and tax arrangements. 

Data-driven policy making

Given the importance of the semiconductor industry for the Dutch economy and the related government support programs, RVO has started the Semicon Data Intelligence project. The aim of the project is to provide colleagues within the national government (EZK, BZ, mission network, etc.) with more detailed industry insights to inform their policymaking and implementation processes. Recent crises have unveiled the urgency for governments to lead decision-making with rigorous data and RVO has responded. RVO and Venture IQ closely worked together to map out the segments of the Dutch semiconductor industry and gather insights into their exact size and earning capacity.

Mapping out the Dutch semiconductor industry

Given the complexity of the semiconductor industry, Venture IQ first collaborated with RVO and Brainport Development to structure the semiconductor landscape in its diverse segments. With this taxonomy, Venture IQ performed a search to build a structured and complete database including all the relevant players with manufacturing or R&D activities in the Netherlands and assessed all entities to identify which value-chain segments they are active in. 

Building a complete and dynamic custom database

To ensure the highest accuracy in the estimation of the size and earning capacity of the Dutch semiconductor industry, Venture IQ’s experienced team of analysts matched financial data from different sources and databases. Venture IQ collaborated closely with RVO to identify those companies for which public data was insufficient to make reliable estimates, and reached out to those organizations to ascertain their information. We started with more than 300 organizations and individually analyzed their operations, size and earning capacity to produce a complete and accurate overview of the Dutch semiconductor industry. 

The database is set up to collect yearly updates on key metrics and perform historical comparisons to assess growth across time and along the different value-chain segments. The first update performed by Venture IQ produced valuable insights. Overall, worldwide revenue of Dutch and foreign-owned organizations with significant activity in the Netherlands grew by 31.1% (around 39.1 bn) between 2020 and 2021. When zooming in on the industry’s operations in the Netherlands, the growth in semiconductor earnings is estimated to be slightly lower: 28.6% (around 22.0 bn). Given the faster growth of revenue vis-à-vis FTE in the Netherlands in 2021 (12.4%), it seems that the productivity of the sector has increased overall.

Benefits for RVO

Venture IQ helped RVO to map out the Dutch semiconductor industry by gathering together precise and complete company and segment-level data. Quality, credibility and relevance of evidence are key to drive well-informed and rational decision-making. With the database built by Venture IQ, RVO can identify opportunities and emerging segments within the Dutch semiconductor industry and thus determine key focal points to stimulate the industry.

You can find a summary of the report here.