Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/32603 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2009
Series/Report no.: 
Jena Economic Research Papers No. 2009,059
Publisher: 
Friedrich Schiller University Jena and Max Planck Institute of Economics, Jena
Abstract: 
We analyze the development of the German knowledge base measured by co-classifications of patents by German inventors and relate this technological development to changes in the structure of the underlying inventor networks. Our central hypothesis states that technologies which become more central to the knowledge base are also characterized by a higher connectedness of the inventor network. We exemplify our theoretical considerations in a comparative study of two patenting fields - information technology and semiconductors. It turns out that information technology shows the highest increases in patents but shows no of a key technology. Contrary, semiconductors develops towards a key technology, despite a moderate increase in the number of patents. The dynamic analysis of inventor networks in both fields shows an increasing connectedness and the emergence of a large component in semiconductors but not in information technology, which is in line with our expectations.
Subjects: 
Knowledge relatedness
Innovator networks
Interdisciplinary research
Patents
Key Technology
JEL: 
O31
Z13
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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