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The purpose of this paper is to understand if and how the technological diversifications of collaborating firms and public research organisations (PROs) affect the technological impact of the resulting joint-patented innovations.

The authors conduct an analysis on a database of 590 dyadic joint patents, assigned to both firms and PROs, registered from 1976 to 2010 to the US Patent and Trademark Office and belonging to green technological classes, as defined by the International Patent Classification green inventory.

The study reveals that the assignees’ technological diversification has a significant influence on the impact of the patents jointly developed. Indeed, the results show that the most impactful joint patents result from collaborations involving technologically diversified firms.

This research sheds further light on the establishment of R&D collaborations between firms and PROs to jointly innovate. Specifically, it provides a novel perspective to investigate the impact of joint patents, by focussing on the assignees’ technological profile.

The present work suggests that firms characterised by a higher degree of technological diversification are more likely to co-develop patent of higher technological impact, as resulting from collaboration with PROs.

This study investigates the factors affecting the impact of joint patents resulting from collaborations between firms and PROs. In particular, the present research focusses on the effect of a relevant characteristic of the partners, such as their technological diversification.

The purpose of this paper is to present a comprehensive picture of the innovative efforts undertaken over time to develop the digital technologies for managing the interface between supply chain management and marketing processes and the role they play in sustaining supply chain management-marketing (SCM-M) integration from an information processing point of view.

Patent analysis and actual examples are used to carry out this study. In detail, first, the authors identify the subset of enabling technologies pertaining to the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) that can be considered the most relevant for effective SCM-M integration (i.e. Industrial Internet of Things, Cloud computing, Big Data analytics and customer profiling, Cyber security). Second, the authors carry out a patent analysis aimed at providing a comprehensive overview of the patenting activity trends characterizing the set of digital technologies under investigation, hence highlighting their innovation dynamics and applications.

This research provides insightful information about which digital technologies may enable the SCM-M integration. Specifically, the authors highlight the role those solutions play in terms of information acquisition, storage and elaboration for SCM-M integration by relying on illustrative actual examples. Moreover, the authors present the organisations more involved in the development of digital technologies for SCM-M integration over time and offer an examination of their technological impact in terms of influence on subsequent technological developments.

So far, much has been said about why marketing and supply chain management functions should be integrated. However, a clear picture of the digital technologies that might be adopted to achieve this objective has yet to be revealed. Thus, the paper contributes to the literature on SCM-M integration and Industry 4.0 by highlighting the enabling technologies for the Industry 4.0 that may particularly serve for managing the SCM-M interface from an information processing perspective.