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Can we map innovation capabilities?
Economic Research Working Paper No.81
Recent years have witnessed a resurgence of industrial policies globally. Through various industrial policy instruments, governments make critical scientific and technological choices that shape innovation paths and resource allocations. Our paper explores innovation capabilities as essential drivers of competitive outcomes, spanning science, technology, and production domains. Based on the economic complexity literature, we propose a methodological framework to measure the innovation capabilities empirically, leveraging data on scientific publications, patents, and trade. Our findings highlight the multidimensional nature of innovation capabilities and underscore the importance of understanding both the specialization and quality of these capabilities. Our results are in line with the complexity literature, as we also find: (i) positive correlations between the innovation complexity and economic growth; and, (ii) the predictive power of existing innovation capabilities for fostering new ones. Based on these findings, we propose novel indicators informing innovation policymaking on the innovation potential across science, technology, and production fields of an ecosystem. We suggest that innovation policymaking needs to be informed by deeper insights into innovation capabilities that are crucial for long-term growth and competitiveness improvement.
Année de publication: 2024
Global Trends in Innovation Patterns: A Complexity Approach
Economic Research Working Paper No.80
Technological know-how in a country shapes its growth potential and competitiveness. Scientific publications, patents, and international trade data offer complementary insights into how ideas from science, technology, and production evolve, combine, and are transformed into capabilities. Analyzing their trajectories enables a more comprehensive and multifaceted understanding of the whole innovation process, from generating ideas to internationally commercializing products. We analyze the production patterns in these three domains, documenting the differences between advanced and emerging market economies. We find that future income, patenting, and publishing growth correlate with the economic complexity indices calculated from these domains. Capabilities embedded in the country also shape future diversification opportunities and make the innovation process path dependent. Lastly, we also show that diversification opportunities can be inferred across innovation domains.
Innovation Policies Under Economic Complexity
Economic Research Working Paper No.79
Recent geopolitical challenges have revived the implementation of industrial and innovation policies. Ongoing discussions focus on supporting cutting-edge industries and strategic technologies but hardly pay attention to their impact on economic growth. In light of this, we discuss the design of innovation policies to address current development challenges while considering the complex nature of productive activities. Our approach conceives economic development and technological progress as a process of accumulation and diversification of knowledge. This process is limited by the tacit nature of knowledge and by countries' binding constraints to growth. Consequently, effective innovation policies should be place-based and multidimensional, leveraging countries' existing capabilities and addressing countries' current problems. This contrasts policies that lead to economic efficiencies, such as copying other countries' solutions to problems that countries do not currently have.
World Intellectual Property Report 2024
Making innovation policy work for development
Combining economic analysis with in-depth industry studies, the 2024 edition of the World Intellectual Property Report introduces a new data-driven methodology designed to help policymakers make informed decisions by leveraging existing local innovation capabilities and strengthen their national innovation ecosystems. Complementing this framework are three case studies across the agriculture technology, motorcycle and video game industries, spanning eight different countries. These studies demonstrate how countries have successfully carved out specialized trajectories within innovative and complex industries.
WIPO Magazine, Issue 1/2024
The WIPO Magazine explores intellectual property, creativity and innovation in action across the world.
Mapping Innovations
Patents and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
This report maps global patents to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), providing invaluable insights into patent trends aligned with the SDGs. It illustrates patenting activities relevant to the SDGs and the state of technology development across these goals. Utilizing the WIPO Technology Concordance, the report analyzes the alignment between specific technology fields and the SDGs. The study further investigates the geographical locations of inventors and jurisdictions for protecting SDG-related patents. Additionally, a detailed analysis of patent owners headquartered in five key regions is presented, highlighting their pivotal role in driving sustainable innovation across various industries.
Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property: An Economic Perspective
Economic Research Working Paper No.77
The emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has profound implications for intellectual property (IP) frameworks. While much of the discussion so far has focused on the legal implications, we focus on the economic dimension. We dissect AI's role as both a facilitator and disruptor of innovation and creativity. Recalling economic principles and reviewing relevant literature, we explore the evolving landscape of AI innovation incentives and the challenges it poses to existing IP frameworks. From patentability dilemmas to copyright conundrums, we find that there is a delicate balance between fostering innovation and safeguarding societal interests amidst rapid technological progress. We also point to areas where future economic research could offer valuable insights to policymakers.
Incentives in Technology Transfer
A guide to encourage, recognize and reward researchers and professionals
The “Incentives in Technology Transfer” Guide offers valuable insights on incentivizing academic researchers and technology transfer professionals to actively participate in technology transfer activities and research commercialization. Drawing from successful global examples, the Guide explores motivations, challenges, and diverse incentives. The Guide also provides recommendations for universities and governments in formulating incentive schemes, an action plan for the planning process, and a questionnaire template for a better understanding of stakeholders, with the aim of optimizing incentive programs and improving technology transfer effectiveness.
Generative AI: Navigating intellectual property
Generative AI: Navigating intellectual property outlines guiding principles and provides a checklist to assist organizations to understand the IP risks, ask the right questions and consider potential safeguards when adopting generative AI tools in their business.
Access to science and innovation in the developing world
Economic Research Working Paper No.78
We examine the implications of lowering barriers to online access to scientific publications for science and innovation in developing countries. We investigate whether and how free or low-cost access to scientific publications through the UN-led Research For Life (R4L) initiative leads to more scientific publications and clinical trials of authors affiliated with research institutions in developing countries. We find that free or reduced-fee access to the health science literature through Hinari (WHO-led subprogramme) increases the scientific publication output and clinical trials output of institutions in developing countries. In contrast, once we control for selection bias, we do not find empirical support for a positive Hinari effect on knowledge spillovers and local institutions' research input into global patenting, as measured by paper citations in patent documents. Main findings can be generalized to other R4L subprogrammes and are likely to also apply to the WIPO-led Access to Research for Development and Innovation (ARDI) programme.