http://graphics.eiu.com/pdf/cisco_innovation_methodology.pdf
Although it is the single best available measure of innovation output, patent numbers are an imperfect proxy for overall innovation activity. Firms often choose to keep innovations that are commerciallysensitive a secret; the propensity to patent may also vary according to the costs of patenting; and many patents may never be implemented commercially. Patents may even obstruct innovation on occasion if they slow the diffusion of knowledge or pose prohibitive barriers to market entry.Inventions, moreover, do not all have the same value. The value distribution of patents is skewed: afew patents have a high value, whereas many have lower values. However, since there are no generally recognised, easily applicable methods for measuring the value of patents, researchers merely count the number of patents meeting various criteria. International comparisons are also affected by differences in procedures and standards across patenting offices. For example, in Japan, a different patent application had until recently to be submitted for each claim; in other countries multiple claims can be made in each application. This helps in part to explain the much larger level of patenting applications in Japan.
One patent measure that reduces some of these problems, and that has been widely used in
international comparisons, is that of the so-called triadic patent families. Triadic patents are those that have been applied for at the EPO, the JPO, and granted by the USPTO to protect the same invention. The triadic patents are counted on the basis of the earliest priority year—the year in which a patent was first applied for at any patent offi ce. However, although triadic patents are in some ways easier to compare across countries, they cover only a small subset of total patents. They are also biased towards high-technology fields and thus may present a skewed picture of total innovation performance. We thus construct another patent measure as the sum of patents applied for by, or granted to, a country’s applicants by regional centres—that is the USPTO, the EPO and the JPO. This measure differs from the triadic patents measure in that patents do not have to have been filed in all three offices to be counted.
Our patents-based measure correlates well with other proxies for innovation performance. In our original study we looked at data on citations from scientific and technical journals; UNIDO estimates for2000 of the share of medium- and high-technology products in a country’s manufacturing output and its manufacturing exports; and the results of a survey question from the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report that asked respondents to rate the extent to which companies were adept at, or able to absorb, new technology. Up-to-date data on article citations and medium-and high-technology output and exports was not available. We thus added some other indicators. Our new set of alternative indicators of innovation output consist of:
We have constructed a composite measure of innovation performance that consists of these indicatorsas well as our patents measure of performance. The composite index gives very similar results to the“patents only” measure. For example, Japan remains first-ranked and Switzerland second. The US, Sweden and Finland are also in the top 5. Thus we can examine the “patents only” index with considerable confidence that it truly reflects a country’s innovation performance.
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