Explicitly Searching for Useful Inventions: Dynamic Relatedness and the Costs of Connecting versus Synthesizing
Scientometrics, Forthcoming
29 Pages Posted: 31 Aug 2010
Date Written: August 30, 2010
Abstract
Inventions combine technological features. When features are barely related, burdensomely broad knowledge is required to identify the situations that they share. When features are overly related, burdensomely broad knowledge is required to identify the situations that distinguish them. Thus, according to my first hypothesis, when features are moderately related, the costs of connecting and costs of synthesizing are cumulatively minimized, and the most useful inventions emerge. I also hypothesize that continued experimentation with a specific set of features is likely to lead to the discovery of decreasingly useful inventions; the earlier-identified connections reflect the more common consumer situations. Covering data from all industries, the empirical analysis provides broad support for the first hypothesis. Regressions to test the second hypothesis are inconclusive when examining industry types individually. Yet, this study represents an exploratory investigation, and future research should test refined hypotheses with more sophisticated data, such as that found in literature-based discovery research.
Keywords: connections, search, inventions, patents, linkage, relatedness
JEL Classification: O30, O32
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?
Recommended Papers
-
Capabilities and Governance: The Rebirth of Production in the Theory of Economic Organization
-
Entrepreneurship and the Economic Theory of the Firm: Any Gains from Trade?
By Nicolai J. Foss and Peter G. Klein
-
Opportunity Discovery, Entrepreneurial Action, and Economic Organization
-
The Theory of the Firm and its Critics: A Stocktaking and Assessment
By Nicolai J. Foss and Peter G. Klein
-
Original and Derived Judgement: An Entrepreneurial Theory of Economic Organization
By Kirsten Foss, Nicolai J. Foss, ...