Investigating the antecedents of general purpose technologies: A patent perspective in the green energy field

This study analyzes how general purpose technologies are developed within the green energy field, by examining the relationship between search breadth across diverse knowledge domains and the technological generality of the resulting inventions. Particularly, we investigate if this relationship is m...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of engineering and technology management Vol. 39; pp. 81 - 100
Main Authors Ardito, Lorenzo, Messeni Petruzzelli, Antonio, Albino, Vito
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 01.01.2016
Elsevier Sequoia S.A
Subjects
Energy
General purpose technologies
Geographically dispersed R&D teams
Green energy technologies
Green products
R&D
Research & development
Search breadth
Studies
Team size
Technological change
Green energy technologies
Team size
Search breadth
Geographically dispersed R&D teams
General purpose technologies
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Summary:This study analyzes how general purpose technologies are developed within the green energy field, by examining the relationship between search breadth across diverse knowledge domains and the technological generality of the resulting inventions. Particularly, we investigate if this relationship is moderated by the R&D team composition, focusing on size and degree of geographic dispersion across countries. Based on a sample of 88,748 green energy patents, we demonstrate that search breadth is curvilinearly related to an invention’s technological generality, and that large and dispersed teams allow organizations to benefit from a wider search breadth.
Bibliography:SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-1
content type line 14
ISSN:0923-4748
1879-1719
DOI:10.1016/j.jengtecman.2016.02.002