"Can Technology Life-Cycles Be Indicated by Diversity in Patent Classifications?" preprint

[Loet Leydesdorff]

Can Technology Life-Cycles Be Indicated by Diversity in Patent
Classifications? <http://arxiv.org/abs/1411.2858> 


In a previous study of patent classifications in nine material technologies
for photovoltaic cells, Leydesdorff et al. (2014, in early view) reported
cyclical patterns in the longitudinal development of Rao-Stirling diversity.
We suggested that these cyclical patterns can be used to indicate
technological life-cycles. Upon decomposition, however, the cycles are
exclusively due to increases and decreases in the variety of the
classifications, and not to disparity or technological distance, measured as
(1 - cosine). The cyclical patterns are associated with the numbers of
inventors in the respective technologies. Sometimes increased variety leads
to a boost in the number of inventors, but in early phases--when the
technology is still under construction--it can also be the other way round. 

 

Preprint available at http://arxiv.org/abs/1411.2858 

 

  _____  

Loet Leydesdorff 

University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR)

 <mailto:loet at leydesdorff.net> loet at leydesdorff.net ;
<http://www.leydesdorff.net/> http://www.leydesdorff.net/ 
Honorary Professor,  <http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/> SPRU, University of
Sussex; 

Guest Professor  <http://www.zju.edu.cn/english/> Zhejiang Univ., Hangzhou;
Visiting Professor,  <http://www.istic.ac.cn/Eng/brief_en.html> ISTIC,
Beijing;

Visiting Professor,  <http://www.bbk.ac.uk/> Birkbeck, University of London;


 <http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en>
http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en

 

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