Patent data as a tool to monitor S & T portfolio's

This article deals with the use of patent data to monitor science and technology (S&T) portfolios. S&T portfolios have become central tools to examine and to monitor the vitality of both institutions and regions in the innovation game that underpins their economic growth and development. Those portfolios have to be monitored not only at the intra-organizational level, but also at the inter-organizational level and at the levels of specific systems of innovation. Therefore, the development of appropriate, easy-to-use and transparent, benchmark indicators to assess the strengths and weaknesses of organizational S&T portfolios is tantamount. In this paper, we report the construction of such a benchmark indicator and we assess its usefulness by applying it to the European Patent Database.status: publishe