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My main problem with this article and associate research is using patents as an indicator of invention. Patents are only an indicator of money, sometimes innova
by tensor 9y ago
My main problem with this article and associate research is using patents as an indicator of invention. Patents are only an indicator of money, sometimes innovation, but certainly not invention.
For reference, innovation is taking existing ideas and implementing or combining them well, invention is creating wholly new works.
Invention is still mostly the domain of academia. Some of the big corporations can afford to fund research into true invention, but generally the risks don't make good business sense because the rate of return is so low.
Innovation happens frequently in startups, but patents are still a poor measure of it. Patents mainly measure whether someone can afford the lawyers to write the applications. In my experience in software, the patents themselves are only a loose approximation of any real technology. Perhaps in mechanical sciences they are more concrete.
- guelo 9y agoPatents are obviously a poor proxy, even inventions are a poor proxy for social impact. But there's no reason to believe that the data would look significantly different if we were able to measure it directly.