Valuation of energy harvesting technologies — Insights for technology managers

Abstract

With the growing number of energy harvesting technologies, there is a need to identify the ones that hold the strongest future potential. This information is important to both investors and policy makers who are looking to adequately resource their development. However, choosing the right technology also requires the right assessment metric. This remains a challenge because of the number of metrics to choose from and lack of guidelines on how to choose the right metric. We attempt to fill this gap through this research. The objective of this article is to examine the future potential of various energy harvesting technologies using well known patent value indicators from literature. Based on a data set consisting of 152 base inventions from four energy harvesting sectors, leading to a study of over 4000 patents, our results show that metrics Technological Activity Degree (TAD) and Knowledge Accumulation (KA) outperform other metrics. The results show that inductive vibration energy harvesting technologies hold a stronger value compared to other technologies in this study, and that not all metrics have the same predictive capability. The study provides guidelines for technology managers and investors for selecting patent evaluation metrics that are appropriate for energy harvesting technologies.