This project seeks to enhance our comprehension of the relationship between patents and potentially disruptive innovation. While the retrospective identification of disruptive technologies is extensively examined in literature, the prospective identification remains an unresolved research inquiry due to the numerous difficult-to-measure factors influencing the success of new technologies. Nevertheless, this question holds significant importance for both industry and policymakers, as well as innovation managers.
Since new and important technologies are likely to be initially documented as patents, we use patent data as the foundation for this analysis. The objective of this project is to identify commonalities across key patents associated with disruptive technologies, respectively to develop a method or algorithm that assists practitioners, researchers and policy makers, possibly even investors and others in identifying potentially disruptive technologies as a starting point for further analysis. Various indicators for analysing patent data are considered for this purpose. Additionally, theoretical foundations of disruptive innovation from Christensen, as well as different types of disruptions and disruptors, are taken into account.
Project team: Melanie Martini (Fraunhofer INT, RWTH Aachen), Marcus John (Fraunhofer INT), Leonidas Aristodemou (OECD), Frank Tietze