Abstract
The Technology Cycle Time indicator (TCT) is a new measure of technological progress. The TCT is the median age of the patents cited on the front page of a patent document. The measure assumes that the more recent the age of the cited patents, the more quickly one generation of inventions is replacing another. The main purpose of the study was to evaluate the TCT in a dynamic context to determine how accurately it measures the pace of technological progress. This study found the trend in TCT changed abruptly from gradually increasing (slowing in cycle time) to steadily decreasing (speeding up in cycle time) following the discovery of high-temperature superconductors. The methodology prescribed in this study could potentially be used in assessing the pace of progress for different technologies or different nations in the same technology [9].
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 127-131 |
| Number of pages | 5 |
| Journal | IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management |
| Volume | 46 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 1999 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:of patent-based technology indicators have been developed for measuring the technological strengths of companies and countries. Unlike the previous aggregate uses of patents, these new technology indicators have been more advanced in terms of information obtained from the patent document. They have drawn from a widely used bibliometric technique called “science indicators” which used the cited references in scientific papers to indicate scientific activity [11]. The references cited in a patent, called “prior art” by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), provide a unique feature which captures the linkage between an invention and the prior knowledge most closely related to it. Earlier studies point to the fact that “citations to a previous patent represent evidence that current state-of-the-art developments are related to or were derived from the earlier inventions” [3, p. 43]. CHI Research, Inc., a private consulting company, has created a series of technology indicators based on patent citations, with support from the U.S. National Science Foundation. These include the following. • Current Impact Index: A normalized indicator of the importance of a company’s patents, based on how often they have been cited in other patents, which shows how frequently they were used as the foundation for other inventions. • Technological Strength: The number of patents a company has obtained multiplied by its Current Impact Index. • Science Linkage: The number of references per patent to journal papers and other scientific publications. It is assumed that the higher the number, the more the company’s patents are building on basic science and technology. • Technology Cycle Time: The median age of U.S. patents cited in a specific patent. This indicator uses patent citations to indicate the age of the inventions on which a new invention is based. It is assumed that the more recent the age the more quickly one generation of inventions is being replaced with another. The patent citation-based technology indicators have been accepted as being useful and important to the field of science and technology indicators [8], [10], [12], [13]. The Current Impact Index, Technological Strength, and Science Linkage have been empirically validated through previous studies [2],
Keywords
- Management of technology and innovation
- Patents
- Superconductor technology
- Technological progress
- Technology cycle time indicator (tct)
- Technology measures or indicators
- Validity study
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Strategy and Management
- Electrical and Electronic Engineering
