Identifying ex ante characteristics of Radical Inventions through patent-based indicators

With this study we aim at contributing to a better measurement of the ex ante technological dimensions characterizing Radical Inventions. Integrating insights from the existing economics and management literature, we characterize radical inventions ex ante along two dimensions: New Functionality and New Origins. New Functionality regards the extent to which an invention provides substantially new functional capacities. New Origins reflects the extent to which an invention builds on different technological knowledge and principles compared to common practice. These can include technological as well as scientific origins. For each dimension we propose an operationalization using patent classification and citation information. We use a large sample of patent applications to present a first validation exercise. Results indicate that although both dimensions are correlated, each of the indicators proposed convey different information on the ex ante characteristics of Radical Inventionsnrpages: 23status: publishe