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The paper proposes an answer to one of the most important questions in corporate innovation management: what mechanisms of technological diversification exist within multinational companies? It is ascertained that research and development (R&D) intra-firm co-invention or co-patenting is one of those mechanisms. Co-invention implies knowledge-sharing, which should lead to unique combinations of knowledge and expertise and hence technological diversification of patent applications.

This paper offers a novel conceptual framework exploring the relationship between patents’ technological diversification and a detailed classification of different forms of international co-invention. Based on the case of Siemens’ Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applications, the revealed technological advantage (RTA) index is utilized to measure the extent of the technological diversification of patent output.

The results show that patent applications generated by subsidiaries in advanced economies in cooperation with other subsidiaries feature unique technological areas that deviate from the company's overall technological specializations. These results provide a strong argument in favor of inter-subsidiary or horizontal co-patenting as a mechanism of new knowledge creation.

On the conceptual level, the results accentuate inter-subsidiary patenting being an important mechanism of knowledge meta-integration boosting technological diversification. The obvious limitation of this paper lies in exploring a single company case, which restricts the generalizability of our findings. Due to the dynamic nature of technological change, the author’s dataset also suffers from a lack of temporal external validity. Future research can expand the scope in both regards in applying our co-invention mode typology.

Based on the results, to diversify knowledge portfolio, companies should strengthen the co-patenting effort and reinforce horizontal (inter-subsidiary) R&D collaborations.

To the author’s knowledge, this is the first time when such a nuanced typology of co-invention modes is being utilized to understand the effect of different co-invention categories on knowledge diversification.

This paper addresses the geographical dimension of cross-border knowledge integration, expressed as the co-invention of patent filings and investigates the siting of patenting activities by major US corporations in China. Most importantly, the study looks into the patterns of international co-invention or the links of these locations to headquarters and other company subsidiaries.

The study explores the cases of six US multinationals that file international patent applications in China. The applications were analyzed based on the composition of invention teams and the locations of inventors.

The co-invented patent filings by US multinational enterprises (MNEs) in China demonstrate a high degree of US–Chinese subsidiary collaboration. Links with other subsidiaries are marginal, and at the same time, high levels of sole patenting by inventors in China point to competence-creating research and development (R&D) activities taking place.

The lack of subsidiary-subsidiary collaboration, especially subsidiaries in other emerging markets, indicates a less diversified strategy of leveraging internal networks of knowledge. This also implies that Chinese subsidiaries still lack attractiveness as partners in subsidiary-subsidiary co-invention. Only two companies in our sample, Procter & Gamble and Intel, demonstrate a highly diversified, integrated and transnational pattern of innovation management.

The paper contributes to the contextual understanding of the rich landscape of R&D activities of major US MNEs in China. By exploring these cases, the paper identifies a number of trends. First, the R&D activities in this sample are highly concentrated in technological clusters located in Beijing and Shanghai. Technological clustering is an important advantage of the innovation landscape in emerging markets. Second, the paper underscores the importance of differentiating between different types of co-invention. The patent applications in this sample tend to unite inventors mostly from the US and China, and so multi-country applications involving subsidiaries in other countries are rare. Thus, the level of integration outside the center-host bandwidth is low. However, Chinese subsidiaries demonstrate high levels of autonomy by filing single-country applications, which implies that they are building their own research identity.

Co-creation and co-invention are two diverse spheres in modern-day supply chains. Despite literature suggesting the existence of similar coherence between these concepts, the availability of published theory favoring these ideal lacks justification. This research aims to investigate the correlation and convergence of these well-known concepts to support a combined impact on research.

Comprehensive review of published literature using mathematical and statistical tools to measure inherent interrelationships and publication impacts in literature handling co-creation and co-invention.

An exploratory quantitative and qualitative analysis reveals the conundrums existing in distribution, keyword and adoption of research in the global and scientific community. The research favors a positive correlation existing between concepts such as co-ordination, collaboration, open-innovation, value creation with supply chain management and its development with rising importance of big data and block-chain technologies. Analysis reveals knowledge development with increased user-based interaction, better utilization of resources and enhanced productivity to support the mutual adaptation of co-creation and co-invention.

Outcomes will be a beacon for researchers to develop models and frameworks. Results derived will aid in improving customer participation, enhance decision making in product development, augment value creation and knowledge and resource sharing leading toward innovation.

Results will provide a detailed outline of the development and implementation of concepts in both developed and developing countries. Outcomes will also serve as a framework for marketing heads, graphic designers, website designers, supplier management and customer management in the service industry, production supervisors and customer management personnel in manufacturing industries.

Social network theory and analytic tools have been increasingly used to examine the interaction between science and technology. Recently, researchers have paid attention to the role of publishing inventors, that is, individuals bridging the collaborative networks between authors (co-authorship network) and inventors (co-invention network). Building on this research, we study how publishing inventors’ structural position in the joint co-authorship and co-invention network affects the quality of the inventions to which they contribute. Specifically, we identify publishing inventors who play a pivotal role in holding the two networks together: their removal not only increases the network fragmentation but also disconnects the joint co-authorship and co-invention network. We define these publishing inventors as cutpoints and find them to contribute to inventions of greater quality. We situate the analysis within the context of the emerging field of nanotechnology. The theoretical and managerial implications of the results are discussed.

Introduction: Today the ability of nations to develop and implement innovations is core for their international competitiveness. Ukraine is striving for innovation progress; however, its innovation performance is relatively low. The research problem is to find the bottlenecks, affecting Ukraine’s innovation capability.

Purpose: This study aims to research the national innovation capability profiles, based on cluster analysis, to develop an understanding of drivers and threats for the innovation capability of Ukraine.

Need of the study: The knowledge-based economy, which had already turned into one of the most efficient developmental models of the 21st century, became a key driver of international competitiveness for the leading developed countries due to their progressive structural shifts towards the growth of high-technology manufacturing and knowledge-intensive sectors. These trends are significant to capture for the sake of increasing the innovation capability of the economy of Ukraine.

Methodology: The study is based on the K-means clustering method, which is employed for identifying 10 country clusters based on the indicators of their R&D and innovation activities, which allowed us to assess the innovation capability of Ukraine in comparison with 140 countries of the world. Data selection and normalisation were based on the 2019 Global Competitiveness Report indicators.

Findings: The study showed that Ukraine’s innovation capability problems are typical for most developing countries and are prevalently connected to low R&D expenditures, patent applications, and international co-invention activities. Most countries, except for the technologically developed ones, follow the so-called ‘passive technological learning’ strategies, which usually result in low economic productivity.

Practical implications: Several innovation policy implications have been developed for the government of Ukraine based on the cluster analysis results and accounting for the problems of the national innovation system (NIS).

Our study provides an industrial census of the dispersion of Internet technology to commercial establishments in the United States. We distinguish between participation, that is, use of the Internet because it is necessary for all business (e.g. email and browsing) and enhancement, that is, adoption of Internet technology to enhance computing processes for competitive advantage (e.g. electronic commerce).

We find that participation and enhancement display contrasting patterns of dispersion. In a majority of industries, participation has approached saturation levels, while enhancement occurs at lower rates with dispersion reflecting long standing industrial differences in use of computing. In general, lead adopters were drawn from a variety of industries, including many of the same industries that lead adoption of other generations of information technologies; however, the appearance of water transportation and warehousing as leading industries in Internet adoption shows that the Internet influenced establishments where logistical processes played a key role. We find large differences across industries and we caution against inferring too much from the experience in manufacturing despite the widespread availability of data in that sector.

This paper explores whether, in the context of university–industry (U–I) collaboration, new innovation strategies can be developed through actors' interactions, the exchange of resources and the co-creation of value for and within the system. In the context of the U–I relationship, the innovation perspective can highlight the need to develop strategies that elicit new formulas of value co-creation, which then facilitate innovation as a result of actor collaboration.

A total of 45 public universities in Spain, representing 95% of the total, participated in qualitative research. Personal in-depth interviews with technology transfer officers (TTOs) were conducted by an external firm; in a second phase, two of the researchers conducted eight interviews with the directors of TTOs in those universities with higher rates of transfer.

Findings reveal that enterprises with a technological focus are strengthening their relationships with universities and attempting to build a university business ecosystem by designing strategies for value co-creation such as co-ownership, co-patenting, and co-invention.

The empirical research is conducted in Spain, and results should be interpreted according to this context. Future research should examine new contexts (other countries) to improve the robustness of the data and enrich the results, thus enabling generalization of the management consequences.

The results provide a means to design strategies under a new collaborative and innovating logic. The theoretical framework contributes to theory, with implications for management.

This study aims to investigate whether there are disparities in research and development (R&D) internationalization between latecomers from economy-level technological disparities and firms with ownership-specific technological capability differences in the wind turbine industry.

Employing econometric analysis based on patent indicators, the authors examine the patent data assigned by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to the technologically advanced economy and the technologically emerging economy.

This study finds that latecomers from technologically advanced economies behave with no difference from early leaders in terms of international co-invention (INCO) but do show differences in another indicator – native ownership of foreign inventors (NOFIs). Additionally, latecomers from economy-level technological disparity show significant differences both in both INCO and NOFI. These results indicate that the latecomers from technologically advanced economies not only possess the nature of latecomers which motivates them to seek knowledge from foreign economies but also benefit from their advanced home base, thereby prompting them to internationalize and access cost-effective R&D resources. Moreover, the results demonstrate that latecomers from technologically emerging economies are more prone to engage in R&D internationalization to augment their own home base compared with firms from advanced economy.

This study extends the literature on R&D internationalization by introducing novel perspectives. It distinguishes some apparent distinctions of the tendency of R&D internationalization between latecomers under economy-level technological disparity as well as firms from ownership-specific technological capabilities differences. Additionally, this study disaggregates R&D internationalization into twin key dimensions: INCO and NOFI. These findings allow for a comprehensive understanding of the differences in the firm's R&D internationalization under economy-level technological disparities and ownership-specific technological differences. These findings offer valuable insights for decision-makers in navigating global innovation activities by highlighting the diverse economy-level technological advantages as well as ownership-specific advantages.

Recent years have seen increased participation by women in Science and Technology activities, but parity with men remains a distant goal. This paper provides a framework for improving knowledge on the dynamics of women’s contributions to innovation, as measured through their contributions as inventors.

Analysis was conducted using data from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) database, covering over 40 years from 1976 to 2019. The study provides a breakdown of women’s inventiveness/innovation by technology area, which permits analysis of whether female inventors tend to work individually or as part of a team, as well as analysis of the effects of international networks.

Specific data have been analyzed around innovative activity by women in Spain, providing new insights on gender gaps. Key findings include those recent increases in inventions by women (as measured through patents) have occurred mostly via participation in internationally connected mixed-gender teams. Furthermore, the inventive creativity of women is found to be sector-biased and framed mainly in the chemical sector.

There are no similar contributions using USPTO data for Spanish inventions. This is an original paper that emphasizes the potential of collaborative networks as key driving mechanisms for the reduction of gender gaps and for the larger integration of women into innovation activities, with potential implications for stakeholders at both firm and governmental levels.

Purpose: The paper aims to examine the link between the indicators of competitiveness of World Economic Forums (WEFs) in the area of higher education, on the one hand, and the Global Competitiveness Index 4.0 and ‘Future Orientation of Government’ sub-pillar, on the other.

Method: Consideration of the link between the mentioned link will be conducted on a sample that includes European Union member countries and potential members. The key information basis for conducting this research makes data from the Global Competitiveness Report 2019 of the WEF. The research was conducted by applying multiple regression analysis.

Findings: The results of the research show that there is a positive correlation between higher education, on the one hand, and the level of national competitiveness and sustainable development, on the other.

Practical Implications: The obtained results of empirical research can serve as a ‘global benchmark’ of future public policy in the field of higher education in the analyzed countries.

Originality/Value: The key contribution of this paper is reflected in providing a clearer insight into the competitiveness factors of the analyzed countries that are expressed in the field of sustainable development and higher education and pointing out the priority activities of competent state authorities to their improving and raising the level of national competitiveness.