The ICT Component of Technological Diversification: Is there an underestimation of ICT capabilities among the world's largest companies?

Sandro Mendonça

No 82, SPRU Working Paper Series from SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex Business School

Abstract: This empirical paper analyses the importance of information and communications technologies (ICT) in the technological diversification trend among the world's large industrial firms. The objective of the research is twofold. First, to emphasise the emerging differences among technologies when companies from different industries patent outside their traditional technological competencies. Second, to investigate whether the tendency among large companies from all industries to patent in ICT is distinctive when compared with other technologies. We find that technological diversification in large companies has certainly occurred in ICTs. For other technologies the results are ambiguous. As could be expected there is considerable industry variation in the intensity and specific directions of ICT patenting. We conclude that the development of corporate capabilities in the key technologies of the emerging ICT paradigm is more widespread than previously emphasised in the literature. One implication is that the rise of multi-technology corporations can be related to the concept of long waves of techno-economic change and to studies characterising ICT as a general-purpose technology.

Keywords: ICT; technological diversification; patents; corporate capabilities; long waves (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L2 L86 L96 O3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2002-06-01
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