EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

A Descriptive Statistics Exploration of Spatio-temporal Patterns in Inventive Activities in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Ben Vermeulen, Inga Zvarich () and Beatrice Messmer ()
Additional contact information
Inga Zvarich: Universität Hohenheim
Beatrice Messmer: Universität Hohenheim

A chapter in Innovation Networks for Regional Development, 2017, pp 131-149 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The findings reported in literature on spatio-temporal patterns in knowledge flows in inventive activities are mixed. We discern two basic theories. Firstly, breakthrough inventions require acquiring alien knowledge outside the region. Externalities then stimulate co-location of subsequent incremental innovation activities. Secondly, breakthrough inventions require cross-fertilization of tacit knowledge from different industries, which requires co-location. After this, progressive codification and technological crystallization facilitates diffusion and collaboration over greater distances. We formulate several additional hypotheses on spatio-temporal phenomena in knowledge flows. We then conduct a descriptive statistics exploration of forward citation graphs of breakthrough inventions of an originator in the pharmaceutical industry. We find indications for several distinct spatio-temporal phenomena following a breakthrough. We find progressive globalization in collaboration within groups of inventors and provide several potential causes. In addition, we also find indications for increasing spatial dispersal of groups of inventors collaborating locally on follow-up technology. Moreover, we find increasingly local follow-up, i.e. that the distance between groups of inventors of cited and citing patent becomes smaller. We provide several suggestions to extend this study.

Keywords: Inventive Activity; Technological Knowledge; Patent Citation; Knowledge Flow; Forward Citation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:eccchp:978-3-319-43940-2_6

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783319439402

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-43940-2_6

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Economic Complexity and Evolution from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-23
Handle: RePEc:spr:eccchp:978-3-319-43940-2_6