Reassessing patent propensity: Evidence from a dataset of R&amp;D awards, 1977–2004

Fontana, Roberto; Nuvolari, Alessandro; Shimizu, Hiroshi; Vezzulli, Andrea

doi:10.1016/j.respol.2012.05.014

Cited by 83 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 40 publications

(68 reference statements)

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“…57–58). Patent applications offer a reasonably good measure of specifically commercially viable, more tangible innovation—especially that which is generated by/in sectors and industries with higher propensities to patent (e.g., Mäkinen, ; Fontana, Nuvolari, Shimizu, & Vezzulli, )—but, as noted by Capello and Lenzi (, p. 189), they do not reflect “innovative efforts that can be developed either in the form of process, marketing, and organizational innovations or in the form of product innovation not [necessarily] obtained via research and patenting activities.” We are therefore only able to observe certain types of innovations and certain dimensions of a region's overall innovative capacity. Hence, while patents are a generally accepted proxy for innovation, they do not capture all types of innovative activity.…”

Section: Model and Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Innovating in less developed regions: What drives patenting in the lagging regions of Europe and North America

Rodríguez‐Pose

Wilkie

2018

Growth and Change

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Not all economically disadvantaged—“less developed” or “lagging”—regions are the same. They are, however, often bundled together for the purposes of innovation policy design and implementation. This paper attempts to determine whether such bundling is warranted by conducting a regional level investigation for Canada, the United States, on the one hand, and Europe, on the other, to (a) identify the structural and socioeconomic factors that drive patenting in the less developed regions of North America and Europe, respectively; and (b) explore how these factors differ between the two contexts. The empirical analysis, estimated using a mixed‐model approach, reveals that, while there are similarities between the drivers of innovation in North America's and Europe's lagging regions, a number of important differences between the two continents prevail. The analysis also indicates that the territorial processes of innovation in North America's and Europe's less developed regions are more similar to those of their more developed counterparts than to one another.

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Section: Model and Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Innovating in less developed regions: What drives patenting in the lagging regions of Europe and North America

Rodríguez‐Pose

Wilkie

2018

Growth and Change

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“…Confirming this thesis, a study comparing systematically patented and unpatented innovations over the period 1977-2004 across industrial sectors disclosed that only 10% of technologically significant new products available for sale or licensing were patented (Fontana, Nuvolari, Shimizu & Vezzulli, 2013).…”

Section: The Enabling Environment For Innovationmentioning

confidence: 64%

Evaluation and innovation: Challenging the single narrative

Picciotto¹

2017

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“…Finally, firms' or individuals' propensity to patent cannot be reliably observed from public data alone (de Rassenfosse & van Pottelsberghe de la Potterie, 2009;Fontana et al, 2013).…”

Section: Selection Bias: Issues With Assessing the Quality Of Inventionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lifting the veil on patents and inventions

Criscuolo

Alexy²,

Sharapov

et al. 2015

AMPROC

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Since patent data became accessible in the 1980s, we have known that research using this data?while providing tremendous opportunities?rests on important assumptions about how patents are actually generated by firms. It is well known that firm-level selection processes shape the likelihood that firms decide to patent or not an invention. What is unknown is to what extent these processes leave the results of work using patent data at risk of being distorted by sample selection bias. To understand the magnitude of this bias, we replicate two important prior studies using data from a novel, proprietary dataset, which contains more than 35,000 invention disclosures made by inventors within a single firm, only some of which went on to be patented. We find strong indications for the presence of significant selection bias in patent studies in examining the variance of creative outcome distributions and the impact of past experience in subsequent inventions. We highlight what the nature of this bias may mean for our current body of knowledge, and provide suggestions of how this issue should be addressed in future research.Jelcodes:O30,O32 ABSTRACTSince patent data became accessible in the 1980s, we have known that research using this data-while providing tremendous opportunities-rests on important assumptions about how patents are actually generated by firms. It is well known that firm-level selection processes shape the likelihood that firms decide to patent or not an invention. What is unknown is to what extent these processes leave the results of work using patent data at risk of being distorted by sample selection bias. To understand the magnitude of this bias, we replicate two important prior studies using data from a novel, proprietary dataset, which contains more than 35,000 invention disclosures made by inventors within a single firm, only some of which went on to be patented. We find strong indications for the presence of significant selection bias in patent studies in examining the variance of creative outcome distributions and the impact of past experience in subsequent inventions. We highlight what the nature of this bias may mean for our current body of knowledge, and provide suggestions of how this issue should be addressed in future research.

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Reassessing patent propensity: Evidence from a dataset of R&D awards, 1977–2004

Cited by 83 publications

References 40 publications

Innovating in less developed regions: What drives patenting in the lagging regions of Europe and North America

Innovating in less developed regions: What drives patenting in the lagging regions of Europe and North America

Evaluation and innovation: Challenging the single narrative

Lifting the veil on patents and inventions

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