Working Paper #2007-022
Knowledge Flows, Patent Citations and the Impact of Science on Technology
Technological innovation depends on knowledge developed by scientific
research. The num-ber of citations made in patents to the scientific
literature has been suggested as an indicator of this process of
transfer of knowledge from science to technology. We provide an
intersec-toral insight into this indicator, by breaking down patent
citations into a sector-to-sector ma-trix of knowledge flows. We then
propose a method to analyze this matrix and construct vari-ous
indicators of science intensity of sectors, and the pervasiveness of
knowledge flows. Our results indicate that the traditional measure of
the number of citations to science literature per patent captures
important aspects intersectoral knowledge flows, but that other aspects
are not captured. In particular, we show that high science intensity
implies that sectors are net suppli-ers of knowledge in the economic
sector, but that science intensity does not say much about pervasiveness
of either knowledge use or knowledge supply by sectors. We argue that
these results are related to the specific and specialized nature of
knowledge.
- Keywords
-
- knowledge input-output analysis
- knowledge flow matrices
- science-to-technology transfer This research has benefited from support under DIME
- which is a project in the European Union 6th Framework Programme. UNU-MERIT Working Papers ISSN 1871-9872
Cite this as
APA 7th ed.Nomaler, Ö., & Verspagen, B. (2007). Knowledge Flows, Patent Citations and the Impact of Science on Technology (UNU-MERIT Working Paper No. 2007-022). UNU-MERIT. https://unu-merit.nl/publications/working-papers/abstract/?id=2864