Reach for the stars: disentangling quantity and quality of inventors’ productivity in a multifaceted latent variable model

Star inventors generate superior innovation outcomes. Their capacity to invent high-quality patents might be decisive beyond mere productivity. However, the relationship between quantitative and qualitative dimensions has not been exhaustively investigated. The equal odds baseline (EOB) framework can explicitly model this relationship. This work com- bines a theoretical model for creative production with recent calls in the patentometrics lit- erature for multifaceted measurement of the ability to create high-quality patents. The EOB is extended and analyzed through structural equation modeling. Specifically, we compared a multifaceted EOB model with a single latent variable for quality, and a two-dimensional model that distinguishes between technological complexity and value of invention portfo- lios. The two-dimensional model had better fit but weaker factor scores (for the “value” latent variable) than the unidimensional model. These findings suggest that both the uni- and the two-dimensional approaches can be directly used for extending research on star inventors, while for practical high-stakes assessments the two-dimensional model would require further improvements

highly skilled migrants and technological diversification in the us and europe

Abstract We have investigated the impact of highly skilled migrants on the evolution of the technological portfolios of European and US sub-regional geographical areas. The specific contribution of the international mobility of inventors on the technological diversification of the innovation output, a driver of regional economic growth and of the emergence of new industries, has been neglected in previous literature. Migrant inventors have been identified by comparing their nationalities with the residence addresses reported in the patent documents. The diversification of the local technological portfolio has been measured as the number of fields of specialization, which were identified from a comparison with the aggregate portfolio of all the analyzed geographical areas. The measure has been calculated using the Hidalgo–Hausman method of reflections on patent data. The applied econometric models show a negative relationship between migration and diversification of technological specializations, thereby supporting the presence of a specialty matching mechanism associated with migration. We have also computed indicators of the relative rarity of a technological field across regions. Rarity results to be positively correlated with the local incidence of migrant inventors, thus suggesting that destination regions are more likely to enter specialization fields of higher complexity

Impact and efficiency ranking of football managers in the Italian Serie A: sport and financial performance

The contribution of managers to the performance of football teams in the Italian Serie A is investigated. Previous results are extended by analyzing two measures of performance: the awarded points from winning matches (sport performance) and the growth of the market value of players (financial performance). Several empirical methods are employed: OLS regressions, Shorrocks-Shapley decompositions of R-squared and Data Envelopment Analysis. Our findings suggest that managers exert a significant influence on both sport and financial performances with differences between top and worst coaches. However, most of the observable characteristics in a manager’s curriculum are not significantly related to team performance

Co-evolution patterns of university patenting and technological specialization in European regions

This paper provides novel evidence on co-evolution patterns of the technological speciali- zation of innovation activities of firms and academic institutions located in the same Euro- pean region during the years from 2003 to 2014. We exploit a novel and unique dataset merging data on EU-funded R&D projects, universities, patents, and economic region- level data for a large sample of universities and firms co-located in geographical areas at the third level of the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS3), which cor- respond to a sub-regional scale of analysis. Our results indicate the presence of substantial heterogeneity across the analyzed EU regions with respect to the co-evolution of industry and academia specializations. In particular, we find that the specialization into a new tech- nological domain is led by the local academic research system only in a few cases. We also document that a number of factors, at both the university and region levels, are associ- ated with convergent or divergent processes in the relative specialization of the innovation activities carried out by firms and universities co-located in the same region

Assessing the innovation capability of EU companies in developing dual use technologies

This study proposes a framework to identify and analyse the European defence innovation ecosystem and to investigate the relevance of dual use inventions, extending previous empirical approaches. 63,714 defence inventions in the decade 2002-2012 were analysed by taking several dimensions into consideration: time, geography, technology, type of innovator. The main findings indicate an increasing trend of patented inventions covering a wide range of technological fields not only in the traditional defence areas, but also in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and in instruments for measurement and control. The innovations seem to be quite concentrated: the twenty largest patent holders (firms and government agencies) account for 40% of total defence inventions. The largest geographical source of innovations is the USA, but South Korea has increased significantly in recent years. Dual use innovations, i.e. military patents subsequently cited by a civilian invention, are identified using a novel method employing patent citations. The proportion of dual use inventions in the whole dataset is 41%, but the value has been decreasing in recent years and shows heterogeneity across technological sectors and geographical areas (the USA reports the highest share, 63.9%). Analysis of knowledge flows suggests significant heterogeneity in the share of intra-border innovations: the European defence innovations are largely cited by US inventions, especially when considering dual use cases.JRC.B.3-Territorial Developmen

Counterfeiting in digital technologies: An empirical analysis of the economic performance and innovative activities of affected companies

n/

The licensing and selling of inventions by US universities

Abstract Our study analyzes the patent transactions of the top 58 US universities in the yeas from 2002 to 2010. We find that 37.0% of the patents granted at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) have been involved in a form of monetization. Among them, 29.7% have been licensed out, 5.9% have been reassigned to other universities, National Laboratories, federal agencies or non-profit entities, and 1.3% have been transferred to companies. We investigate the patent characteristics associated with each monetization channel (i.e., licensing and outright sale). We also introduce a set of survival model analyses to control for the dynamic nature of the monetization process. The transacted inventions in the portfolio (and, in particular, the licensed ones) are peculiar over several dimensions: they show higher value or technical merit, higher legal robustness, and higher complexity. Licensed patents differ from reassigned ones especially for a higher technological complexity. Patents transferred to companies are not frequent in the university core fields, but the corresponding market for technology is able to select those with higher value and legal robustness

Using machine learning to map the European Cleantech sector

This paper is the introductory chapter of a series of analyses that will result from the CLEU1 project, a collaboration between the universities of Politecnico di Torino, Politecnico di Milano and Università degli Studi di Bologna. The project focuses on Cleantech, an industry sector that develops and deploys sustainable and environmentally friendly solutions for various target applications. It aims to: i) analyse the actions that are undertaken by European Cleantech firms to engage in transformative climate and innovation actions to align with the European Green Deal-inspired policies; ii) examine the association of environmental innovation and the number of new investments made by venture capital (VC) investors in Cleantech companies on environmental indicators; iii) analyse the enabling factors for the development of European Cleantech firms, with a focus on EU-level and country-level targeted policies and regulations and the different sources of financing; iv) analyse the extent to which the implementation of policies and regulations affect both the propensity of cleantech firms to seek external equity financing and the equity offering by VC funds

Foreign applications at the Japan Patent Office - An empirical analysis of selected growth factors

This article aims to evaluate some of the possible factors which could have had a significant role in the increase in the yearly number of foreign patent applications at the Japan Patent Office. The analysed period ranges from 1991 to 2005. In the years considered, foreign applications increased constantly while the number of domestic filings remained almost the same or even decreased. The increase is more striking when compared to analogous figures of the US Patent and Trademark Office and the European Patent Office, where the corresponding ratio did not change too much in the same period. Building on previous literature, this paper analyses the impact of some macroeconomic and structural characteristics of the extending countries, on one side, and, on the other side, some features specific to the receiving country and its Patent Office (here Japan and the JPO). This work tries to capture the relevance of such drivers in the increased amount of foreign patent applications at the JP