Discovering and assessing fields of expertise in nanomedicine: a patent co-citation network perspective

Discovering and assessing fields of expertise in emerging technologies from patent data is not straightforward. First, patent classification in an emerging technology being far from complete, the definitions of the various applications of its inventions are embedded within communities of practice. Because patents must contain full record of prior art, co-citation networks can, in theory, be used to identify and delineate the inventive effort of these communities of practice. However, the use patent citations for the purpose of measuring technological relatedness is not obvious because they can be added by examiners. Second, the assessment of the development stage of emerging industries has been mostly done through simple patent counts. Because patents are not all valuable, a better way of evaluating an industry’s stage of development would be to use multiple patent quality metrics as well as economic activity agglomeration indicators. The purpose of this article is to validate the use of (1) patent citations as indicators of technological relatedness, and (2) multiple indicators for assessing an industry’s development stage. Greedy modularity optimization of the ‘Canadian-made’ nanotechnology patent co-citation network shows that patent citations can effectively be used as indicators of technological relatedness. Furthermore, the use of multiple patent quality and economic agglomeration indicators offers better assessment and forecasting potential than simple patent counts

Essays on the Recombination and Diffusion of Innovations

RÉSUMÉ La mondialisation a réorganisé l'activité productive sur notre planète. Alors que les pays industrialisés étaient initialement le centre de l'activité manufacturière, ils ont perdu leur position auprès de pays émergents qui offrent des coûts de production moins élevés. Compte tenu de la quantité apparemment inépuisable de main-d'œuvre bon marché disponible à l'échelle mondiale, ce déplacement progressif des opérations de production ne semble pas avoir de fin en vue. Faisant face à ce sombre tableau de la situation économique, l'innovation technologique est considérée comme la panacée pour résoudre le problème de la croissance de la productivité et de la baisse du niveau de vie dans les économies avancées. Quelques mots de mise en garde doivent être dits contre de tels vœux pieux. Toutes les innovations technologiques n'ont pas le même impact économique et les récentes avancées technologiques ne semblent pas avoir le même impact que des innovations majeures du 19e siècle. De ce point de vue, le fait de ne pas contrôler le processus de production et de commercialisation des innovations qui ont une portée économique plus large semble être un obstacle pour ceux qui prêchent l'innovation comme une solution au problème de la stagnation économique. Du point de vue des cycles économiques, la croissance économique est enracinée dans la production d'innovations de bases. Ces percées servent de base à des inventions ultérieures dans une multitude de disciplines technologiques. Pourtant, malgré leur immense importance d'un point de vue social, on en sait peu sur les conditions qui conduisent à leur création et des bénéfices privés qu'elles engendrent pour les innovateurs. En ce qui concerne la question de la création d'innovations de base, l'importance de l'exploration technologique par rapport à l'exploitation est une source de débat. Les entreprises devraient-elles concentrer leurs efforts de recherche à un ensemble restreint de disciplines ou doivent-elles combiner des technologies distantes? En ce qui concerne la question sur les rendements privés sur l'innovation de base, le rôle des institutions publiques en tant que producteurs d'innovations de base est également un sujet controversé. L'objectif principal de cette thèse est de répondre à ces questions en identifiant 1) les conditions dans lesquelles la recombinaison de technologies distantes conduit à la propagation de l'invention résultante dans une multitude de disciplines, et 2) la manière dont les secteurs public et privé valorisent des innovations de base. Pour répondre à ces questions, des analyses économétriques d'un échantillon de brevets canadiens dans l'industrie de la nanotechnologie sont effectuées. En ce qui concerne la première question, les résultats montrent que la recombinaison distante conduit généralement à des innovations de base. Toutefois, un ensemble de modérateurs ont un impact sur la recombinaison distante. Alors que les organisations privées sont moins susceptibles de produire des innovations de base, leur effort pour combiner des technologies distantes est plus susceptible de produire des innovations de base. En outre, des liens forts avec les sciences fondamentales ont un effet négatif sur la recombinaison distante. En ce qui concerne la deuxième question de recherche, les résultats montrent que les innovations de base sont généralement associées à une perception des rendements privés plus importants sous conditions de dynamisme industriel et de régimes d'appropriation forts. Toutefois, en ce qui concerne les secteurs public et privé, les perceptions dépendent de la diffusion actuelle d'une technologie ainsi que sa diffusion future perçue. Les entreprises privées perçoivent des rendements plus élevés sur les inventions qui se sont déjà propagées dans plusieurs disciplines, tandis que celles qui seront propagées dans l'avenir sont perçues comme étant moins précieuses.----------ABSTRACT Globalization has reorganized productive activity in our planet. While industrialized countries where initially the center of manufacturing activity, they have lost their title to emerging economies who offer cheaper production costs. Given the seemingly endless supply of cheap labor available at a global level, this gradual shift of production operations does not appear to have an end in sight. In such a bleak economic picture, technological innovation is seen as the panacea for solving the problem of productivity growth, and thus the issue of decreasing standards of living in advanced economies. A few words of caution need to be said against such wishful thinking. All technological innovations do not have the same economic impact and recent technological advances do not appears to have the same impact as major innovations of the 19th century. From this perspective, the failure to control the process of producing and commercializing innovations that have broad economic impact appears to be an obstacle for those who preach innovation as a solution to the economic stagnation problem. From a business cycles perspective, economic growth is rooted in the production of basic innovations. These breakthroughs serve as the basis for subsequent inventions in a multitude of technological disciplines. Yet, despite their immense importance from a social point of view, little is known about the conditions that lead to their creation and the private benefits that they engender to innovators. Regarding the question about the creation of basic innovations, the importance of technological exploration versus exploitation is a major source of debate. When aiming for innovation impact, should firms focus their search effort to a focused set of disciplines or should they combine technologies from distant ones? Concerning the question about private returns to basic innovations, the role of public institutions as producers of basic innovations is also a controversial subject. The main purpose of this thesis is to answer these questions by identifying 1) the conditions under which distant technology recombination leads to the spread of the resulting invention across disciplines, and 2) how the private and public sectors value basic innovations. To answer these questions, econometric analyses of patenting activity in the Canadian nanotechnology industry are performed. Regarding the first question, the results show that distant recombination generally leads to basic innovations. However, a set of moderators have a negative impact on distant recombination. While private organizations are less likely to produce basic innovations, their effort to combine distant technologies is more likely to produce basic innovations. Also, strong linkage with basic science has a negative effect on distant recombination. Concerning the second research question, results show that basic innovations are generally associated with higher perceived private returns under conditions of industry dynamism and strong appropriability regimes. However, regarding private and public sectors, perceptions depend on the present spread of a technology and its future perceived spread. Firms perceives greater returns in inventions that have already spread across disciplines, while those that will subsequently spread in the future are perceived as less valuable

The Effect of Technological Innovations on Economic Activity

In this PHD dissertation, the nature of technological shocks and their effect on economic activity are examined. The first chapter is dedicated to the analysis of general purpose technologies (GPTs) and their identification in the patent data. I argue that the previous literature has been identifying sub-technologies of a given GPT rather than the technology itself. Moreover, I argue that the quantity of active GPTs identified using the old methodology is substantially greater than theoretically possible. The first chapter of my thesis presents an alternative approach to the identification of a general purpose technology than the one used in the previous literature and provides an example of such a technology identified in the patent data. This technology is the microcomputer. The chapter examines its evolution, diffusion, and the effect it has on other patented technologies. The findings are in line with the theoretical GPT literature. In the second chapter of my dissertation, I examine the effect of a positive technology shock on aggregate hours worked. Compared to the previous literature, the novelty of the approach proposed in the current study comes from two directions: the choice of variables and the technique used to identify the technological shock. A patent-based measure is the main measure used to approximate the unobserved aggregate technological process. The second important novelty of the study is the use of the sign restriction Vector Autoregression (VAR) shock identification technique that is believed to be more robust than the alternative identification techniques used in the literature. The sign restrictions are determined using a general equilibrium model with skilled and unskilled labour featuring skill-specific and general technology shocks. The analysis shows that aggregate hours increase following both kinds of technological shocks. The results obtained in the study are robust to the technology measure used. When a patent-based measure is replaced with a production function residual measure the effect of the shock still improves the aggregate hours. Moreover, the results are robust to the way aggregate hours themselves are specified. Finally the results are supported when more conventional long run restrictions are applied on the VAR. However, with the long run restrictions it does matter how the aggregate hours are specified the same way it mattered in the previous studies. In the third chapter, I continue the analysis of the effect of a technological improvement on the labour market. In this study, I attempt to address the general criticism of the VAR methodology about the fact that only a limited number of variables can be processed. This limitation requires a researcher to make a choice in favour of certain variables and to justify this choice. Moreover, no matter which variables are chosen for the final modeling form, some information would still be excluded from the study. I overcome this limitation by incorporating factor analysis techniques into the VAR framework. I introduce Factor-tofactor VAR (F-FAVAR) that is an extension of the FAVAR approach that has already been succesfully used in the past.The F-FAVAR methodology allows an inclusion of a latent factor "impulse variable" besides the latent factor "response variables". As a result a large number of macroeconomic variables is examined and there is no necessity to exclude any of the variables. Moreover, there is no necessity to make a choice in favour of a particular measure of technology. All the relevant technological measures can be included into the model. As a result it is possible to examine the reaction of various economic and business variables to a technological shock. The reaction of the key economic variables to a technology shock is in accordance with the theory. The reaction of various labour measures to the shock was also examined. The results of the third chapter mainly support the findings of the second chapter about the positive effect of a technology shock on aggregate hours. In order to check the robustness of the results, instead of the F-FAVAR methodology, a simple FAVAR methodology was also used. For that methodology it was necessary to select a particular measure of technology to be included into the VAR model as well as to impose restrictions on the VAR. Several different technology measures with two alternative sets of restrictions were used. The results of the robustness analysis mainly support the findings of the F-Favar methodology

Literature on applied machine learning in metagenomic classification: A scoping review

Applied machine learning in bioinformatics is growing as computer science slowly invades all research spheres. With the arrival of modern next-generation DNA sequencing algorithms, metagenomics is becoming an increasingly interesting research field as it finds countless practical applications exploiting the vast amounts of generated data. This study aims to scope the scientific literature in the field of metagenomic classification in the time interval 2008–2019 and provide an evolutionary timeline of data processing and machine learning in this field. This study follows the scoping review methodology and PRISMA guidelines to identify and process the available literature. Natural Language Processing (NLP) is deployed to ensure efficient and exhaustive search of the literary corpus of three large digital libraries: IEEE, PubMed, and Springer. The search is based on keywords and properties looked up using the digital libraries’ search engines. The scoping review results reveal an increasing number of research papers related to metagenomic classification over the past decade. The research is mainly focused on metagenomic classifiers, identifying scope specific metrics for model evaluation, data set sanitization, and dimensionality reduction. Out of all of these subproblems, data preprocessing is the least researched with considerable potential for improvement

Research and development talents training in China universities - based on the consideration of education management cost planning

Research and development (R&D) talents training are asymmetric in China universities and can be of great significance for economic and social sustainable development. For the purpose of making an in-depth analysis in the education management costs for R&D talents training, the belief rule-based (BRB) expert system with data increment and parameter learning is developed to achieve education management cost prediction for the first time. In empirical analysis, based on the BRB expert system, the past investments and future planning of education management costs are analyzed using real education management data from 2001 to 2019 in 31 Chinese provinces. Results show that: (1) the existing education management cost investments have a significant regional difference; (2) the BRB expert system has excellent accuracy over some existing cost-prediction models; and (3) without changing the current education management policy and education cost input scheme, the regional differences in China’s education management cost input always exist. In addition to the results, the present study is helpful for providing model supports and policy references for decision makers in making well-grounded plans of R&D talents training at universitie

Distant recombination and the creation of basic inventions: An analysis of the diffusion of public and private sector nanotechnology patents in Canada

This article explores whether the relationship between the breath of technological integration (recombination distance) and the breath of an invention׳s subsequent application (basicness) is moderated by the sector of activity (private or public), science-linkage strength and industry characteristics. Our analysis of Canadian nanotechnology patents granted between 1990 and 1997 shows that although private organizations generally yield smaller rates of basic inventions than public organizations, increases to recombination distance by the former increases invention basicness at a higher rate; increasing reliance upon basic science moderates the relationship between recombination distance and basicness; and increases to recombination distance in emerging science-based industries increases invention basicness at a higher rate. These findings have implications regarding the debate around the efficiency of the academic enterprise model

Business cycles and investment in intangibles : evidence from Spanish firms

This paper tests the opportunity-cost theory using a panel of Spanish firms during the period 1991-2010. Under this theory, productivity-enhancing activities, such as R&D investment, should increase during downturns because of the fall in their relative cost – in terms of forgone output –. This would imply that business cycles may have a (positive) long-term impact on productivity growth. In the spirit of Aghion et al. (2007) we allow the impact of the cycle on R&D to vary between firms with different access to credit, finding that credit constraints may reverse the countercyclicality of R&D, even if it is optimal for them. We go one step further and explore whether other productivity-enhancing activities, like on-the-job training and the purchase of patents, follow a similar pattern. We find that on-the-job training expenditures are countercyclical and, unlike R&D investment, credit constraints seem not to affect their cyclical behaviour. Investments in other intangibles, such as patent purchases, are found to be acyclical, also irrespective of financial constraints, which could suggest some kind of substitution between R&D and patent purchases over the cycle. Finally, complementarities between the different intangible investments and the traditional productive factors (labour and capital) are also investigated via production function estimates, in order to assess potential indirect effects of the cycle on long-run growthEste trabajo contrasta la teoría del coste de oportunidad utilizando un panel de empresas españolas para el período 1991-2010. Según esta teoría, las actividades que mejoran la productividad empresarial, como por ejemplo la inversión en I+D, deberían aumentar durante la fase baja del ciclo, ya que su coste relativo en términos del producto final que se deja de producir cae. Este hecho podría implicar que los ciclos económicos pueden tener un impacto (positivo) sobre el crecimiento de la productividad a largo plazo. En línea con la importante contribución de Aghion et al. (2007), realizamos un ejercicio empírico en el que permitimos que el efecto del ciclo económico sobre el gasto en I+D varíe entre empresas con distinta capacidad de acceder a la financiación externa, y encontramos que las restricciones crediticias pueden llegar a revertir la contraciclicidad de la I+D, aunque ello no sea lo óptimo para la empresa. En este trabajo se da un paso más y se explora si existen otras actividades beneficiosas para la productividad empresarial, como el gasto en formación o la adquisición del derecho de uso de patentes, que siguen un patrón cíclico similar al de la I+D. Los resultados apuntan a que el gasto en formación de las empresas es contracíclico y, a diferencia de la inversión en I+D, dicho patrón no parece verse afectado por la presencia de restricciones financieras. La inversión en otros activos intangibles, como las compras de patentes, resulta ser acíclica, también con independencia de las restricciones de crédito, lo que podría sugerir cierto grado de sustituibilidad entre la inversión en I+D y las compras de patentes a lo largo del ciclo económico. Finalmente, también se estudian las complementariedades entre los diferentes tipos de inversión en activos intangibles y los factores productivos tradicionales (trabajo y capital físico) mediante la estimación de una función de producció

Tracing the evolution of service robotics : Insights from a topic modeling approach

Acord transformatiu CRUE-CSICAltres ajuts: Helmholtz Association (HIRG-0069)Altres ajuts: Russian Science Foundation (RSF grant number 19-18-00262)Taking robotic patents between 1977 and 2017 and building upon the topic modeling technique, we extract their latent topics, analyze how important these topics are over time, and how they are related to each other looking at how often they are recombined in the same patents. This allows us to differentiate between more and less important technological trends in robotics based on their stage of diffusion and position in the space of knowledge represented by a topic graph, where some topics appear isolated while others are highly interconnected. Furthermore, utilizing external reference texts that characterize service robots from a technical perspective, we propose and apply a novel approach to match the constructed topics to service robotics. The matching procedure is based on frequency and exclusivity of words overlapping between the patents and the reference texts. We identify around 20 topics belonging to service robotics. Our results corroborate earlier findings, but also provide novel insights on the content and stage of development of application areas in service robotics. With this study we contribute to a better understanding of the highly dynamic field of robotics as well as to new practices of utilizing the topic modeling approach, matching the resulting topics to external classifications and applying to them metrics from graph theory