Validation of innovation indicators from companies’ websites

Abstract

In this exploratory study, we use a web mining technique to source data in order to create innovation indicators of Canadian nanotechnology and advanced materials firms. 79 websites were extracted and analysed based on keywords related to the concepts of R&D and intellectual property. To understand what our web mining indicators actually measure, we compare them with those from a classic questionnaire-based survey. Formative indices from the surveys variables were built to better represent all the possibilities resulting from the web mining indicators. A MTMM matrix lead us to conclude that the formative indices are a good representation of the web mining indicators. As a consequence, the data extracted via our web mining technique can be used as proxies for the relative importance of R&D and the importance of IP, which would have previously only been measured using conventional methods such as government administrative data or questionnaire-based surveys.