Exploring potential R&D collaboration partners through patent analysis based on bibliographic coupling and latent semantic analysis

The aim of the present research is to provide a new systematic methodology to explore potential Research and Development (R&D) collaboration partners using patent information. The potential R&D collaboration partners are visualised as a patent assignee level map based on technological similarity between patents by using the network analysis. The proposed framework utilises two analytic methods to measure technological similarity. The first method, bibliographic coupling analysis, measures technological similarity based on the citation relationship using patent bibliographic information. Second, latent semantic analysis is utilised based on semantic similarity using patent textual information. The fuel cell membrane electrode assembly technology field is selected and applied to illustrate the proposed methodology. The proposed approach allows firms, universities, research institutes and governments to identify potential R&D collaborators as a systematic decision-making support tool.     

Role of home and host country innovation systems in r&d internationalisation: a patent citation analysis

This paper has three novelties. First, we argue that any given R&D facility’s capacity to exploit and/or augment technological competences is a function not just of its own resources, but the efficiency with which it can utilise complementary resources associated with the relevant local innovation system. Just as asset-augmenting activities require proximity to the economic units (and thus the innovation system) from which they seek to learn, asset-exploiting activities draw from the parent’s technological resources as well as from the other assets of the home location’s innovation system. Furthermore, we argue that most firms tend to undertake both asset exploiting and augmenting activities simultaneously. Second, we use patent citation data from the European Patent Office to quantify the relative asset augmenting vs. exploiting character of foreign-located R&D. Third, we do so for European MNEs located in the US, as well as US MNEs located in Europe. Our results indicate that both EU (US) affiliates in the US (EU) rely extensively on home region knowledge sources, although they appear to exploit the host country knowledge base as well.     

Technological knowledge,spillover and productivity: evidence from Taiwanese firm level panel data

Using a panel data on Taiwanese manufacturing firms from 1990–1997, this study investigates the relationship among technological knowledge, spillover and productivity. In addition to R&D stock, we also employ patent counts to construct the output-side indicators of knowledge and spillover to explore the relationship between knowledge and productivity. We find a very significant contribution of R&D, patents and spillover stock to productivity. In addition, the magnitude of the patent stock coefficient is substantially larger than that estimated by R&D stock. Our results imply that innovative activity investment has been very productive in increasing output for Taiwanese manufacturing firms in the 1990s.     

Quantifying knowledge exchange in R&D networks: a data-driven model

We propose a model that reflects two important processes in R&D activities of firms, the formation of R&D alliances and the exchange of knowledge as a result of these collaborations. In a data-driven approach, we analyze two large-scale data sets, extracting unique information about 7500 R&D alliances and 5200 patent portfolios of firms. These data are used to calibrate the model parameters for network formation and knowledge exchange. We obtain probabilities for incumbent and newcomer firms to link to other incumbents or newcomers able to reproduce the topology of the empirical R&D network. The position of firms in a knowledge space is obtained from their patents using two different classification schemes, IPC in eight dimensions and ISI-OST-INPI in 35 dimensions. Our dynamics of knowledge exchange assumes that collaborating firms approach each other in knowledge space at a rate μ for an alliance duration τ. Both parameters are obtained in two different ways, by comparing knowledge distances from simulations and empirics and by analyzing the collaboration efficiency \(\mathcal {\hat {C}}_{n}\). This is a new measure that takes in account the effort of firms to maintain concurrent alliances, and is evaluated via extensive computer simulations. We find that R&D alliances have a duration of around two years and that the subsequent knowledge exchange occurs at a very low rate. Hence, a firm’s position in the knowledge space is rather a determinant than a consequence of its R&D alliances. From our data-driven approach we also find model configurations that can be both realistic and optimized with respect to the collaboration efficiency \(\mathcal {\hat {C}}_{n}\). Effective policies, as suggested by our model, would incentivize shorter R&D alliances and higher knowledge exchange rates.     

Knowledge disclosure as intellectual property rights protection

We consider the problem of an inventor who discloses knowledge under the threat of a rival who may patent a competing idea. Disclosure diminishes the probability that the rival has of receiving a patent (legal externality) but it also decreases the rival’s marginal R&D cost (knowledge externality). Our results reveal that: (i) when the knowledge externality is ‘large’ (‘small’) relative to the legal one, an increase (decrease) in the patentability standard leads to higher disclosure and promotes R&D and (ii) if subsequent research creates positive external effects, the patentability standard should be set to promote further disclosure and R&D in equilibrium. The impact on the equilibrium configuration of changes in market profits is also examined.     

Innovation strategy and the patenting behavior of firms

This paper investigates whether firms’ innovation strategies affect their patenting behavior, as measured by both the probability of having a patent portfolio and the number of active patents held. Three main dimensions of an innovation strategy are taken into account: the relative importance of basic research, applied research and development work in total R&D activities, the product or process orientation of innovation efforts, and the extent to which firms enter into collaborative R&D with other institutions. The major findings can be summarized as follows: (1) taking into account the various dimensions of an innovation strategy turns out to approximate the patenting behavior of firms better than the traditional Schumpeterian hypotheses related to firm size and market power; (2) there is a positive relationship between the patent portfolio of firms and an outward-oriented innovation strategy characterized by R&D partnerships with external organizations - scientific institutions and competitors in particular; (3) process-oriented innovators patent less than product-oriented innovators; (4) a stronger focus on basic and applied research is associated with a more active patenting behavior; (5) firms that perceive high barriers to innovation (internal, risk-related or external barriers) have smaller patent portfolios; (6) the perceived limitations of the patent system do not significantly influence the patenting behavior, suggesting that firms patent for other strategic reasons than merely protecting innovation rents.     

Is Embodied Technology the Result of Upstream R&D? Industry-Level Evidence

This paper provides an exploratory analysis of whether data on the research and development (R&D) spending directed at particular technological/product fields can be used to measure industry-level capital-embodied technological change. Evidence from the patent literature suggests that the R&D directed at a product, as the main input into the “innovation” production function, is proportional to the value of the innovations in that product. I confirm this hypothesis by showing that the decline in the relative price of a good is positively correlated with the R&D directed at that product. The hypothesis implies that the technological change, or innovation, embodied in an industry's capital is proportional to the R&D that is done (“upstream”) by the economy as a whole on each of the capital goods that a (“downstream”) industry purchases. Using R&D data from the National Science Foundation, I construct measures of capital-embodied R&D. I find they have a strong effect on conventionally measured total-factor productivity growth, a phenomenon that seems to be due partly to the mismeasurement of quality change in the capital stock and partly to a positive correlation between embodied and disembodied technological change. Finally, I find the cross-industry variation in empirical estimates of embodied technological change accord with the cross-industry variation in embodied R&D. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Number: O3.     

In-house R&D,external R&D and cooperation breadth in Spanish manufacturing firms: is there a synergistic effect on innovation outputs?

ABSTRACT

This study explores the nature of relationship between in-house R&D, external R&D and cooperation breadth and their joint impact on patent counts as well as technological, product and process, innovations in Spanish manufacturing firms. With regards to patent counts, empirical findings from a Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimator suggest a complementarity effect of internal and external R&D activities conditional on the breadth of R&D cooperation. Concerning technological innovation, results from dynamic random-effects probit models indicate no synergistic effects. In addition, we find evidence of persistence of all three innovation output measures. Our results suggest policy implications in relation to strengthening firms’ absorptive capacity that could have long-run effects.     

R&D efficiency and heterogeneity – a latent class application for the OECD

Expenditures devoted to research and development (R&D) are scarce and thus need to be used as efficiently as possible given the financial constraints countries are facing. This article assesses the relative efficiency of R&D expenditures for 26 OECD member countries and two nonmember countries. As countries differ in their national innovation systems and states of economic development and industrialization, e.g. transition economies in Eastern Europe versus Asian countries versus Anglo-Saxon countries, the measurement of R&D efficiency needs to consider differences in the technology of knowledge production. By means of a latent class model for stochastic frontiers, we relax the assumption of a homogeneous technology frontier and model technological differences in knowledge production among countries. Empirical evidence suggests the existence of different classes stressing the importance of accounting for countries’ disparities within R&D efficiency analysis.     

A simple theory and evidence on the determinants of firm R&D

This paper derives a simple, but informative, model of firm R&D to figure out key factors that determine firm R&D effort. The model suggests a demand-pull, technology-push theory of R&D by showing that a firm's profit-maximizing R&D expenditure is determined jointly by both demand-side factors and technology-side factors. The former includes demand size (firm sales) and consumer preference over quality and price and the latter includes R&D cost structure or the production-cost effect of product R&D and firm-specific technological competence. In addition, the model shows that other things being equal, the stock of exogenous technological knowledge, including the firm's previously accumulated technological knowledge, relevant to current R&D which is negatively related with current R&D effort. An empirical analysis of firm R&D intensities and technological capabilities of more than 1600 firms in nine industries across six countries provides supportive evidence for the theory. Further, the theory implies that R&D intensity or the R&D-to-sales ratio is independent of firm size unless firm size affects technological competence and that given consumer preference and R&D cost structure facing all firms in the same industry, the distribution of firm-specific technological competence among firms determines the distribution of firm R&D intensities within the industry.     

Appropriation Of Returns From Technological Assets And The Values Of Patents And R&D In Japanese High-Tech Firms †

This paper investigates the extent that technological assets contribute to the value of the firm, using the sample of 90 Japanese firms in pharmaceutical, chemical, and electrical equipment industries. We use the firm's R&D expenditures and the number of patents (in stock) as the measures of its technological assets and show that the relative usefulness of these two measures varies across industries. Particularly, Tobin's q is positively related to the technological assets most strongly in the pharmaceutical industry. It is also most sensitive in this industry to the level of patent stock, coinciding with the view that drug patents are more effective than other patents as a means of appropriating returns from innovation. The communications equipment industry is also characterized by its q's dependence on patent stock. In addition, this industry's q is particularly sensitive to the level of net R&D investment in the most recent year, presumably because of the rapid technological progress in this industry.     

Strategic technology editing of the patent stage: lesson from a case of inkjet printer development

Patents are conventionally regarded as representing post-procurement of rights based on results of research and development (R&D). Patents can also be regarded as factors promoting R&D itself. In this study, the author examines the strategic meaning of patents in R&D through analyses of the R&D processes at Canon Inc., which is widely considered to submit patents strategically. The author identified characteristic behaviour related to patent acquisition in the R&D of inkjet printers. Canon constructed a strong patent group precisely by editing patents submitted earlier. Characteristic patent submissions were also identified: they elevated the obtained R&D results to higher concepts as milestones of R&D. These findings are discussed from the viewpoint of the meaning of patents for R&D and the possibility of effective R&D at the patent stage.     

A compared R&D-based and patent-based cross impact analysis for identifying relationships between technologies

The planning of technological research and development (R&D) is demanding in areas with many relationships between technologies. To support decision makers of a government organization with R&D planning in these areas, a methodology to make the technology impact more transparent is introduced. The method shows current technology impact and impact trends from the R&D of an organization's competitors and compares these to the technology impact and impact trends from the organization's own R&D. This way, relative strength, relative weakness, plus parity of the organization's R&D activities in technology pairs can be identified.A quantitative cross impact analysis (CIA) approach is used to estimate the impact across technologies. Our quantitative CIA approach contrasts to standard qualitative CIA approaches that estimate technology impact by means of literature surveys and expert interviews. In this paper, the impact is computed based on the R&D information regarding the respective organization on one hand, and based on patent data representative regarding R&D information of the organization's competitors on the other hand. As an illustration, the application field ‘defence’ is used, where many interrelations and interdependencies between defence-based technologies occur. Firstly, an R&D-based and patent-based Compared Cross Impact (CCI) among technologies is computed. Secondly, characteristics of the CCI are identified. Thirdly, the CCI data is presented as a network to show the overall structure and the complex relationships between the technologies. Finally, changes of the CCI are analyzed over time. The results show that the proposed methodology has the potential to generate useful insights for government organizations to help direct technology investments.     

Foreign and domestic R&D investment

A considerable share of R&D investment is due to multinational firms that simultaneously operate R&D bases at home and abroad. We develop a simple model of foreign and domestic R&D investment and test the model's predictions on a sample of 146 Japanese multinational firms’ R&D investments in Japan and the United States in 1996. The empirical results confirm that the foreign to domestic R&D ratio depends on relative technological opportunities and relative demand conditions, with foreign research expenditures responding to technological opportunity and foreign development expenditures responding to demand.     

Identifying R&D partners for dye-sensitized solar cells: a multi-level patent portfolio-based approach

There is a great and urgent necessity for appropriate data and methods to help organisations select appropriate R&D (Research and Development) partners. In response, this study presents a structured framework for identifying and selecting the R&D partners with the greatest potential to meet a given technological need. The formal methods in the framework include systematic information collection, patent portfolio analysis, technological similarity screening, and semantic evaluation that views subject-action-object (SAO) sentence structures as problem-solution patterns. The results of an empirical evaluation, with dye-sensitive solar cells as the case, demonstrate that using this framework can reveal more appropriate R&D partners for technological needs (TNS) in less time and with less cost than methods based solely on one criterion.     

THEY DON'T INVENT THEM LIKE THEY USED TO: AN EXAMINATION OF ENERGY PATENT CITATIONS OVER TIME

This article uses patent citation data to study flows of knowledge across time and across institutions in the field of energy research. Popp [2002, Induced Innovation and Energy Prices. American Economic Review, 92(1), 160–180.] finds that the level of energy-saving research and development (R&D) depends not only on energy prices, but also on the quality of the accumulated knowledge available to inventors. Patent citations are used to represent this quality. This article explores the pattern of citations in these fields more carefully. Evidence for diminishing returns to research inputs, both across time and within a given year is found. To check whether government R&D can help alleviate potential diminishing returns, special attention is paid to citations to government patents. The government patents filed in or after 1981 are more likely to be cited. More importantly, descendants of these government patents are 30% more likely to be cited by subsequent patents. Earlier government research was more applied in nature and is not cited more frequently.     

Technological opportunity and the growth of knowledge: A Schumpeterian approach to measurement

A model of endogenous growth, based on Schumpeter's notion of trustified capitalism, is developed and applied to firm-level data for the period 1973–1991. The model relates the market value of a firm to its current profits and to its R&D expenditures. The relationship depends upon the expected rate of knowledge growth, the expected value of an innovation and the elasticity of the R&D production function. Over the sample period, investors expected knowledge to grow at an average rate of 5 percent, a measure which reflects both process innovations and new product discoveries. Elasticities of the R&D production functions are estimated for thirteen industry groups and interpreted as measures of technological opportunity. There is no evidence of secular decline in technological opportunity over the sample period, but there is some evidence of diminishing returns to R&D intensity. Variations in technological opportunity over time are not correlated across industries. In contrast, the expected rates of knowledge growth at the industry level are highly correlated with the aggregate expected rate.     

Firm size and types of innovation

We propose a general theory of innovation that illustrates the relative benefits of performing process versus product R&D when firm size is endogenous. A firm's size, scope, and R&D portfolio are shown to reflect the same underlying characteristic of the firm, namely manufacturing efficiency. We demonstrate that efficient firms become larger, have greater scope, and perform more of both process and product R&D. In light of decreasing returns to R&D, this implies small firms obtain more product innovations per dollar of R&D than large firms, which is consistent with evidence we present that small firms are more innovative than large firms as they obtain more patent counts and citations per dollar of R&D.     

A comparison of proxy variable and stochastic latent variable approaches to the measurement of bias in technological change in south african agriculture*

Technical change is inherently unobservable and has conventionally been represented by proxy variables, from simple time trends to more sophisticated knowledge stock variables. This paper follows Lambert and Shonkwiler (1995) in modelling technical change as a stochastic unobservable variable and tests this formulation against the alternative of using R&D and patent indices. This is done by fitting a system of share equations, derived from the dual profit function, to production data for South African agriculture. Each equation includes both unobserved technical change components and technical proxy variables. Variable deletion tests show that conventional proxy variables fail to explain the biases of technological change, while cointegration tests show that technical change is both stochastic and biased. The latent variables provide estimates of biases that are consistent with past studies and the historical record and can be explained by policy change in South Africa following WWII. The demonstration of high rates of return to R&D is not sufficient to justify R&D activity when biased technological change exacerbates input use and welfare distortions within and without the sector. * We thank the University of Pretoria for funding the study and the referees and delegates for many useful comments.     

Input and output additionality of R&D subsidies

This article analyses the effects of public R&D subsidies on R&D input and output of German firms. We distinguish between the direct impact of subsidies on R&D investment and the indirect effect on innovation output measured by patent applications. We disentangle the productivity of purely privately financed R&D and additional R&D investment induced by the public incentive scheme. For this, a treatment-effect analysis is conducted in a first step. The results are implemented into the estimation of a patent production function in a second step. It turns out that both purely privately financed R&D and publicly induced R&D show a positive effect on patent outcome.