Schumpeterian patterns of innovative activity in the ICT field

This paper studies the patterns; of innovation in the ICT field using patents and patent citations. It provides an original methodology to identify ICT applications using patent abstracts and selecting the most frequent sequential triples of words without any a priori selection of keywords. This paper shows that the set of IPC classes related to ICT is broader than the one usually considered. Moreover, our results show that ICT applications can be distinguished into two main groups in terms of growth and structure of innovative activities, technological pervasiveness, and knowledge sources. High opportunity ICT applications are characterised by high growth of patenting activity, high rate of entry of new innovators and high concentration of technological activity across firms. They also display a diversified knowledge base in terms of technological domains and actors involved. Conversely, low opportunity ICT applications are characterised by a lower growth and by a lower concentration of innovative activities across firms, as well as by a lower rate of entry of new innovators. Innovations in these ICT applications show less diversified knowledge sources and a higher degree of internal knowledge base. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.