University Patenting: Estimating the Diminishing Breadth of Knowledge Diffusion and Consumption

The rate of university patenting increased dramatically during the 1980s. To what extent did the knowledge flow patterns associated with public sector inventions change as university administrators and faculty seemingly became more commercially oriented? Using a Herfindahl-type measure of patent assignee concentration and employing a difference-in-differences estimation to compare university to firm patents across two time periods, we find that the university diffusion premium (the degree to which knowledge flows from patented university inventions are more widely distributed across assignees than those of firms) declined by over half during the 1980s. In addition, we find that the university diversity premium (the degree to which knowledge inflows used to develop patented university inventions are drawn from a less concentrated set of prior art holders than those used by firms) also declined by over half. Moreover, in both cases the estimated increase in knowledge flow concentration is largely driven by universities experienced in patenting, suggesting these phenomena are not likely to dissipate with experience.

University Research, Industrial R&D, and the Anchor Tenant Hypothesis

We examine geographic concentration, agglomeration, and co-location of university research and industrial R&D in three technological areas: medical imaging, neural networks, and signal processing. Using data on scientific publications and patents as indicators of university research and industrial R&D, we find strong evidence of geographic concentration in both activities at the level of MSAs. While evidence for agglomeration (in the sense of excess' concentration relative to the size of MSAs and the size distribution of research labs) of research in these fields is mixed, we do find strong evidence of co-location of upstream and downstream activity. We view such co-located vertically connected activities as constituents of a local innovation system,' and these appear to vary markedly in their ability to convert local academic research into local commercial innovation. We develop and test the hypothesis that the presence of a large, local, R&D-intensive firm an anchor tenant' enhances the productivity of local innovation systems by making local university research more likely to be absorbed by and to stimulate local industrial R&D. Presence of anchor tenant firms may be an important factor in stimulating both the demand and supply sides of local markets for innovation and may be an important channel for transmission of spillovers. While our empirical results are preliminary, they indicate that anchor tenant technology firms may be an economically important aspect of the institutional structure of local economies.

Birds of a Feather - Better Together? Exploring the Optimal Spatial Distribution of Ethnic Inventors

We examine how the spatial and social proximity of inventors affects knowledge flows, focusing especially on how the two forms of proximity interact. We develop a knowledge flow production function (KFPF) as a flexible tool for modeling access to knowledge and show that the optimal spatial concentration of socially proximate inventors in a city or nation depends on whether spatial and social proximity are complements or substitutes in facilitating knowledge flows. We employ patent citation data, using same-MSA and co-ethnicity as proxies for spatial and social proximity, respectively, to estimate the key KFPF parameters. Although co-location and co-ethnicity both predict knowledge flows, the marginal benefit of co-location is significantly less for co-ethnic inventors. These results imply that dispersion of socially proximate individuals is optimal from the perspectives of the city and the economy. In contrast, for socially proximate individuals themselves, spatial concentration is preferred - and the only stable equilibrium.

Putting Patents in Context:Exploring Knowledge Transfer from MIT

In this paper we explore the degree to which patents are representative of the magnitude, direction, and impact of the knowledge spilling out of the university by focusing on MIT, and in particular on the departments of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering. Drawing on both qualitative and quantitative data, we show that patenting is a minority activity: a majority of the faculty in our sample never patent, and publication rates far outstrip patenting rates. Most faculty members estimate that patents account for less than 10% of the knowledge that transfers from their labs. Our results also suggest that in two important ways patenting is not representative of the patterns of knowledge generation and transfer from MIT: patent volume does not predict publication volume, and those firms that cite MIT papers are in general not the same firms as those that cite MIT patents. However, patent volume is positively correlated with paper citations, suggesting that patent counts may be reasonable measures of research impact. We close by speculating on the implications of our results for the difficult but important question of whether, in this setting, patenting acts as a substitute or a complement to the process of fundamental research.MIT Center for Innovation in Product Development under NSF Cooperative Agreement Number EEC-9529140 and the Center for Knowledge-Based Enterprises at Queen’s Universit

A Point-of-Sale Digital Payment Device for Extending Credit

In the absence of credit scores, credit penetration remains low in many regions of the world. This limits economic opportunities for a large portion of the global population that lack credit histories. For many users, traditional sources of credit such as banks or microfinance institutions are difficult to access and cumbersome and are not tailored to their financial needs. This disclosure describes a compact, internet-connected payment device that can be deployed at small and medium-sized business (SMB) outlets. The device serves both as a digital payment terminal as well as an access point for credit discovery and lending. With appropriate permissions, the device can leverage SMB sales data to assess the creditworthiness of regular customers. Customers can access credit offers via a simple user interface and make repayments via familiar digital payment mechanisms

Why are Some Regions More Innovative than Others? The Role of Firm Size Diversity

Large labs may spawn spin-outs caused by innovations deemed unrelated to the firm's overall business. Small labs generate demand for specialized services that lower entry costs for others. We develop a theoretical framework to study the interplay of these two localized externalities and their impact on regional innovation. We examine MSA-level patent data during the period 1975-2000 and find that innovation output is higher where large and small labs coexist. The finding is robust to across-region as well as within-region analysis, IV analysis, and the effect is stronger in certain subsamples consistent with our explanation but not the plausible alternatives.

A study of coronary artery variations in patients undergoing invasive coronary angiography

Invasive coronary Angiography (ICA) is a readily available invasive imaging modality that provides high-resolution anatomical information of the coronary arteries. Studies of coronary artery dominance and variants may helpful for management of coronary artery diseases. Aim: The aim of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of coronary artery dominance and variation in patients undergoing invasive coronary angiography. Methods: This was a descriptive research study design.  20-90 years age group patients undergoing invasive coronary angiography were enrolled in our study. Wide ranges of data were collected as well as evaluation of medical reports in order to distinguish perception over this “Coronary Artery Variations & Anomalies” and prevalence in this country context.  In all patients in which a coronary anomaly, origin, course and/or termination of the coronary arteries had been originally reported. Results: A total of 390 patients undergoing coronary angiography were evaluated for coronary artery variations and anomalies. Majority of the patients (32%) were 50-60 year age group. Most of the patients (77%) had right dominant circulation. Ramus intermedius was the common anatomical variant found in 13.4% cases. Conclusions: ICA is a first line method for detecting coronary artery dominance, variation and anomalies, lead to helping in diagnosing and management of coronary artery diseases

Common coupled fixed point theorems for contractive mappings in fuzzy metric spaces

The purpose of this paper is to give some new fixed point theorems for contractive  type mappings in fuzzy metric spaces. The results presented improve and generalize some recent result. The result is a genuine generalization of the corresponding result of S.Sedghi et al. (2010).   Keywords: Fuzzy metric space, t-norm, g-convergent, coupled common fixed point. 2010 MSC: Primary 54E70; Secondary 54H25

Superhuman science: How artificial intelligence may impact innovation

New product innovation in fields like drug discovery and material science can be characterized as combinatorial search over a vast range of possibilities. Modeling innovation as a costly multi-stage search process, we explore how improvements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) could affect the productivity of the discovery pipeline in allowing improved prioritization of innovations that flow through that pipeline. We show how AI aided prediction can increase the expected value of innovation and can increase or decrease the demand for downstream testing, depending on the type of innovation, and examine how AI can reduce costs associated with well-defined bottlenecks in the discovery pipeline. Finally, we discuss the critical role that policy can play to mitigate potential market failures associated with access to and provision of data as well as the provision of training necessary to more closely approach the socially optimal level of productivity enhancing innovations enabled by this technology