Co-inventor Networks Research Articles

Atypical combinations of technologies in regional co-inventor networks

Novel combinations of technologies are usually the result of collaborative work that builds on existing knowledge. Albeit inventors and their respective communities tend to be specialized, inventor collaborations across differently specialized peers have the potential to generate co-inventor networks that provide access to a diverse set of knowledge and facilitate the production of radical novelty. Previous research has demonstrated that short access in large co-inventor networks enables innovative outcomes in regional economies. However, how connections in the network across different technological knowledge domains matter and what impact they might generate is still unknown. The present investigation focuses on ‘atypical’ combinations of technologies as indicated in patent documents. In particular, the role of technological specializations linked in co-inventor networks that result in radical innovation in European regions is analyzed. Our results confirm that the share of atypical patents is growing in regions where bridging ties establish short access to and across cohesive co-inventor sub-networks. Furthermore, the evidence suggests that the strong specialization of co-inventor communities in regions fosters atypical combinations because these communities manage to increase the scale and scope of novel combinations. Thus, bridges between communities that are specialized in different technologies favor atypical innovation outcomes. The work shows that not diversity per se, but links across variously specialized inventor communities can foster radical innovation.

Design is Everywhere, But Nowhere in Patent Analytics

The number of design patents has grown significantly in the last 140 years. However, a data-driven approach for design patents has been overlooked and underutilised in the design management and innovation research communities. Through the prism of a patent professional, data analyst and designer, this photo essay demystifies the complexity of design patent data and sheds light on the underlying value of design as it features among a range of diverse innovation activities. Patent network analysis and visualisation techniques enable the building of a series of patent citation maps and co-inventor networks. Cases from renowned companies—Apple, Dyson, Samsung, and LG electronics— reveal different shapes of innovation activities, focusing on product diversification strategies, collaboration patterns and design-technology cross-pollination flows.

Economic geography of innovation: The effect of gender-related aspects of co-inventor networks on country and regional innovation.

This paper focuses on the analysis of the effects of inventor networks on country and regional innovation. We use data from an OECD inventor database that spans more than forty years to build collaboration networks in which the network nodes are countries and regions, and linkages are patents produced by inventors from different regions and countries. We first investigate the network that includes all inventors and then analyze the network focusing on women inventors. We argue that both country and regional-level network centrality positively affect country and regional innovation (with stronger effects at the country level), and centrality in collaborations that involve women has an additional positive impact. We also find that women inventors' share in the pool of inventors is positively associated with innovation quality both at the county and regional levels. Furthermore, our findings indicate that in the network of women inventors, countries and regions that are in cohesive clusters (formed by repeated interactions between interconnected actors) show stronger innovation performance. Our study also highlights important nuances between country-level and region-level effects.

No inventor is an island: Social connectedness and the geography of knowledge flows in the US

Do informal social ties connecting inventors across distant places promote knowledge flows between them? To measure informal ties, we use a new and direct index of social connectedness of regions based on aggregate Facebook friendships. We use a well-established identification strategy that relies on matching inventor citations with citations from examiners. Moreover, we isolate the specific effect of informal connections, above and beyond formal professional ties (co-inventor networks) and geographic proximity. We identify a significant and robust effect of informal ties on patent citations. Further, we find that the effect of geographic proximity on knowledge flows is entirely explained by informal social ties and professional networks. We also show that the effect of informal social ties on knowledge flows is greater for new entrepreneurs or ‘garage inventors’, for older or ‘forgotten’ patents, and for flows across distant technology fields. It has also become increasingly important over the last two decades.

The Impact of Co-Inventor Networks on Smart Cleantech Innovation: The Case of Montreal Agglomeration

We use patent big data and apply a combination of network analysis techniques to explore the social structure of the Montreal tech community and its embeddedness in the global innovation landscape. In particular, we focus on the smart cleantech segment. In doing so, we analyze the effect of inventor collaborations on innovations and the emergence of smart clean technologies and smart sustainable solutions in Montreal and their global impact. Our analysis reveals the importance of both local and international ties for the general development of innovations in Montreal’s competitive urban economy, with a stronger impact of international ties, in generating smart cleantech innovations. We discuss the implications of our findings for smart cleantech and cleantech clusters and for further development of tech agglomerations.

Inter-firm inventor mobility and the role of co-inventor networks in producing high-impact innovation

Inter-firm mobility of inventors is a major source of embodied knowledge transfer and receiving firms enjoy additional benefits from the collaboration networks of mobile inventors. However, there is still limited understanding on how the firm can maximize the impact of incoming inventors and what structure of co-inventor networks is the most beneficial for that. To answer this question, we construct a weighted and time-decayed co-inventor network from all IT-related patents in the harmonized OECD PATSTAT 1977–2010 database and analyze events of inter-firm inventor mobility. We look at the future impact of firm innovation and isolate the effect of mobile inventors’ network characteristics from the characteristics of the collaboration network in the receiving firm. Our results imply that high-impact innovations are produced if the firm hires broker inventors who have diverse networks and thus has the potential to channel a wide pool of knowledge into the firm. We find evidence that cohesive networks within the firm, measured by small world characteristics, exaggerate the effect of incoming brokers and high-impact inventors.

The structure of collaboration networks: Findings from three decades of co-invention patents in Chile

Abstract Collaboration networks have primarily been studied in developed economies. In this paper, we present a comprehensive analysis of co-inventor networks in a small but thriving OECD economy in Latin America: Chile. Using a dataset for patents granted in the country between 1989 and 2018, we study a variety of statistical properties for five different co-inventor networks. We show that these networks exhibit power-law, small-world, and preferential attachment properties, all of which have been used to describe networks in more advanced economies. We also highlight some apparent differences in collaboration patterns between networks (and inventors) and we reveal the precarious nature of the network of local inventors by confirming the community structure property. Evidence for strong positive autocorrelation between highly and lowly productive inventors is presented via methods used in spatial econometrics. Our results show that the inventor system in Chile is highly fragmented, which emphasizes the need for strong government intervention in steering research funding, and for more collaboration between inventors, especially local ones.

Effects of international co-inventor networks on green inventions in Brazil, India and South Africa

Abstract This paper presents international co-inventor networks as both a predictor variable of countries’ ability to produce and disseminate internationally green inventions, and an alternative mechanism to support development of relevant programmes and policies in that regard. It includes cases from three developing countries with limited resources for clean technology development, Brazil, India and South Africa, which have shown successes owing to the potentials of co-inventor networks. It contributes the extent literature on this topic, which predominantly emphasizes firms’ responses to conventional governments’ interventions (subsidies, market price, standards, and interagency cooperation) to achieve cleaner production plans and particularly the Targets 17.6; 17.7 and 17.8 of the sustainable development goals. Broadly, such targets aim at enhancing countries’ technological capabilities through partnership. The paper finds various correlations between co-inventor networks and growth of patents in solar energy, air pollution management and biofuels in the sample countries. Correlations are linear in India, followed by Brazil owing to the larger sizes of co-inventor networks but nonlinear in South Africa, which has smaller networks. The paper argues that co-inventor networks accelerate transnational exchanges of core human capital, and are fitting predictors of production and flows of green inventions. They are worth adopting in national and transnational industrial and innovation cluster policies globally to support sustainable production plans.

An integrated solution for detecting rising technology stars in co-inventor networks

Online patent databases are powerful resources for tech mining and social network analysis and, especially, identifying rising technology stars in co-inventor networks. However, it’s difficult to detect them to meet the different needs coming from various demand sides. In this paper, we present an unsupervised solution for identifying rising stars in technological fields by mining patent information. The solution integrates three distinct aspects including technology performance, sociability and innovation caliber to present the profile of inventor, meantime, we design a series of features to reflect multifaceted ‘potential’ of an inventor. All features in the profile can get weights through the Entropy weight method, furthermore, these weights can ultimately act as the instruction for detecting different types of rising technology stars. A K-Means algorithm using clustering validity metrics automatically groups the inventors into clusters according to the strength of each inventor’s profile. In addition, using the nth percentile analysis of each cluster, this paper can infer which cluster with the most potential to become which type of rising technology stars. Through an empirical analysis, we demonstrate various types of rising technology stars: (1) tech-oriented RT Stars: growth of output and impact in recent years, especially in the recent 2 years; active productivity and impact over the last 5 years; (2) social-oriented RT Stars: own an extended co-inventor network and greater potential stemming from those collaborations; (3) innovation-oriented RT Stars: Various technical fields with strong innovation capabilities. (4) All-round RT Stars: show prominent potential in at least two aspects in terms of technical performance, sociability and innovation caliber.

Measure of Design M&As: Exploratory investigations of IP analysis in design

Despite active participation of design firms in M&A markets, there has been little research measuring the value of design M&As. It is partially due that design has been seen to be an intangible asset. This paper seeks to the understanding of the value of design M&As and provides a possible metric for measuring the value using patent analysis. The value of design M&A was investigated at two levels: Design as differentiator (i.e., new product development) and Design as coordinator or integrator (i.e., organizational growth). The evolution of patenting quantity (e.g., the number of design patent applications, Locarno classes) and quality (e.g., forward citation, coinventor networks) in pre- and post-acquisition deals was suggested. We conducted a case study using the design and utility patents of Adobe Systems Inc. The results show the dynamics of innovation area and the presence of the high values of inventors holding design-tech linkage, which could be a potential intangible source of company growth. This study further provides implications for companies which might consider design M&As as new ways of design investment.

Community structure in co-inventor networks affects time to first citation for patents

We have investigated community structure in the co-inventor network of a given cohort of patents and related this structure to the dynamics of how these patents acquire their first citation. A statistically significant difference in the time lag until first citation is linked to whether or not this citation comes from a patent whose listed inventors share membership in the same communities as the inventors of the cited patent. Although the inventor-community structures identified by different community-detection algorithms differ in several aspects, including the community-size distribution, the magnitude of the difference in time to first citation is robustly exhibited. Our work is able to quantify the expected acceleration of knowledge flow within inventor communities and thereby further establishes the utility of network-analysis tools for studying innovation dynamics.

Corrigendum: What are the most promising conduits for foreign knowledge inflows? innovation networks in the Chinese pharmaceutical industry

We study innovation networks in emerging markets, where foreign actors have been identified as key sources of knowledge spillovers as well as progenitors of industry clusters. Focusing on connectivity as a channel for international knowledge sourcing, we widen our lens beyond MNEs to include critical innovative actors such as research institutions (i.e. universities and research centers). We examine the geographic dispersion of co-inventor networks generated by US patents associated with the Chinese pharmaceutical industry. Previous research has highlighted the role of organizationally driven MNE networks as enablers of foreign knowledge inflows to less developed countries. However, our results emphasize the critical role of individually motivated networks arising from advanced economy research institutions in connecting China to global knowledge networks.

What are the most promising conduits for foreign knowledge inflows? innovation networks in the Chinese pharmaceutical industry

We study innovation networks in emerging markets, where foreign actors have been identified as key sources of knowledge spillovers as well as progenitors of industry clusters. Focusing on connectivity as a channel for international knowledge sourcing, we widen our lens beyond MNEs to include critical innovative actors such as research institutions (i.e. universities and research centers). We examine the geographic dispersion of co-inventor networks generated by US patents associated with the Chinese pharmaceutical industry. Previous research has highlighted the role of organizationally driven MNE networks as enablers of foreign knowledge inflows to less developed countries. However, our results emphasize the critical role of individually motivated networks arising from advanced economy research institutions in connecting China to global knowledge networks.

An analysis of Japan’s connectivity to the global innovation system

PurposeIn the modern knowledge-intensive economy, a nation’s competitiveness depends on the ability of its constituent firms to innovate. Extant research in national systems of innovation highlights institutions and public policies toward innovation as key determinants that affect firms’ innovation activities. This paper aims to widen the investigation by arguing that co-inventor connectivity allows firms to access the most tacit knowledge within global innovation systems. Therefore, it is one of the key factors that underpin a nation’s ability to develop and sustain its competitiveness.Design/methodology/approachUsing a data set of 406,168 patents from US Patent and Trademark Office during the period of 1975-2004, this study analyzed the Japanese system of innovation through co-inventor networks.FindingsSurprisingly, the authors found that compared to other advanced countries such as Germany and Denmark, the Japanese innovation system is quite closed.Originality/valueThe dimension of tacit knowledge is crucial in the current environment of rapid cycle time, short product lifespans and increasing emphasis on exploratory innovation. Hence the authors speculate that closedness to global innovation systems could be one of the reasons why many of Japan’s traditionally powerful multinational enterprises exhibit weak performance in recent years.

The Future of Weak Ties

The Future of Weak Ties

Decomposing the Triple-Helix synergy into the regional innovation systems of Norway: firm data and patent networks

The Triple Helix model of university-industry-government relations allows us to use mutual information among geographical, sectorial, and size distribution of firms to measure synergy at various geographical scales in a nation. In this paper we decompose the synergy in Triple Helix relations and analyze the decomposition at the county level. We use micro-level data for all Norwegian firms from 2002 to 2014. This provides new and more detailed insight into the factors explaining the previously reported variation in synergy at county level in Norway. Furthermore, we analyze the county and city level distributions of all national as well as USPTO granted patents with at least one Norwegian inventor. Co-inventor networks for Norwegian USPTO patents are visualized using Google maps. The counties with technology-dominated synergies and strong knowledge institutions have a higher level of international co-inventor networks. Sectorial and geographical networks characterize the oil and gas dominated county, Rogaland. In contrast the knowledge institution dominated county of Sor-Trondelag has broader networks both with regard to sectors and geography. In the small industry dominated county of More og Romsdal with high synergy, the lack of international co-inventor network is striking. This might be interpreted as a sign of industrial lock-in. The use of both firm level and patent data together give a broader and more precise picture of the innovation systems under study. The firm level data is closely linked to the industry sector, whereas the patent data seem to be more linked to the knowledge infrastructure. The use of both national and international patent data also broadens the picture of the innovation activity of the nation.

Decomposing the Triple-Helix Synergy into the Regional Innovation Systems of Norway: Firm Data and Patent Networks

The Triple Helix model of university-industry-government relations allows us to use mutual information among geographical, sectorial, and size distribution of firms to measure synergy at various geographical scales in a nation. In this paper we decompose the synergy in Triple Helix relations and analyze the decomposition at the county level. We use micro-level data for all Norwegian firms from 2002 to 2014. This provides new and more detailed insight into the factors explaining the previously reported variation in synergy at county level in Norway. Furthermore, we analyze the county and city level distributions of all national as well as USPTO granted patents with at least one Norwegian inventor. Co-inventor networks for Norwegian USPTO patents are visualized using Google maps. The counties with technology-dominated synergies and strong knowledge institutions have a higher level of international co-inventor networks. Sectorial and geographical networks characterize the oil and gas dominated county, Rogaland. In contrast the knowledge institution dominated county of Sor-Trondelag has broader networks both with regard to sectors and geography. In the small industry dominated county of More og Romsdal with high synergy, the lack of international co-inventor network is striking. This might be interpreted as a sign of industrial lock-in. The use of both firm level and patent data together give a broader and more precise picture of the innovation systems under study. The firm level data is closely linked to the industry sector, whereas the patent data seem to be more linked to the knowledge infrastructure. The use of both national and international patent data also broadens the picture of the innovation activity of the nation.

Inventor networks in renewable energies: The influence of the policy mix in Germany

Technological change and gains in efficiency of renewable power generation technologies are to a large extent driven by governmental support. Various policy instruments that can broadly be categorized as technology push, demand pull or systemic constitute part of the policy mix for renewable energies. Our goal is to gain insights into the influence of this policy mix on the intensity and organization of inventive activities for wind power and photovoltaics in Germany since the 1980s. We examine the effect of different instruments on the size and structure of co-inventor networks based on patent data. Our results indicate notable differences between the technologies: the network size for wind power is driven by technology push and systemic instruments, while in photovoltaics, demand pull is decisive for network growth. By and large, the instruments complement each other and form a consistent mix of policy instruments. The structure of the networks is driven by demand pull for both technologies. Systemic instruments increase interaction, especially in the wind power network, and are complementary to demand pull in fostering collaboration.

Technological focus and connectivity: Evidence of newly industrialized countries in East Asia

Sourcing diverse sets of knowledge globally through co-inventor networks constitutes an opportunity for innovation catch-up for less developed countries. In this paper, we analyze global connectivity of Korea and Taiwan, the two Asian economies that achieved remarkable economic development in a short period of time, in terms of co-inventor network during their catch-up period from 1980 to 2010. Our results suggest that these two countries are not well-connected to the rest of the world when it comes to innovation networks. Further analyses show that, the two countries developed capabilities rapidly by focusing on emerging technologies, which might be the one of the reasons why both countries did not need to source established knowledge through the linkages to the rest of the world. Our results also show that the existence and development of business groups in these countries partly explain the low level of connectedness to the global innovation system.

Research Collaboration in Co-inventor Networks: Combining Closure, Bridging and Proximities

Cassi L. and Plunket A. Research collaboration in co-inventor networks: combining closure, bridging and proximities, Regional Studies. This paper investigates the determinants of co-inventor tie formation using micro-data on genomic patents from 1990 to 2006 in France. In a single analysis, it considers the relational and proximity perspectives that are usually treated separately. In order to do so, it analyses various forms of proximity as alternative driving forces behind network ties that occur within existing components (that is, closure ties) as well as those between two distinct components (that is, bridging ties). Thus, the paper investigates not only the respective impacts of network and proximity determinants, but also how they overlap, interact and possibly act as substitutes or complements.