The economic impact of a new invention depends on its novelty and its conventionality, according to new research by SFI research fellow Hyejin Youn of Oxford Univeristy and co-authors.
The researchers devised a measure of invention novelty by examining which U.S. Patent classification codes were frequently paired, then classified inventions according to how well they fit the norm. Followup analyses revealed that “patents introducing novelty on top of the conventional units would receive higher citations, and hence have higher impact."
Read the paper in EPJ Data Science (March 10, 2016)
Read the article in the SpringerOpen blog (April 14, 2016)