Assessing a relative technological competitiveness using patent and paper information at the country level: Model and application in mobile communications

Science and technology have been the driving force of development for knowledge-based economies. In particular, as competition in mobile communications technology innovation among countries become more intense, there are growing needs for enhanced judgment, evaluation, and prediction of technological capabilities in order to improve a national competitiveness. Over the past decade, the mobile communications can be considered as the fastest growing industry. The worldwide mobile subscribers were 5.28 billion in 2010 and are expected to 7.3 billion in 2016. Until now, several models of a national technology level evaluation have been evaluated on only expert surveys or restricted patent and paper information respectively. However, the different methodologies are a result of a certain theoretical and empirical consensus and they generally lead to identify different results depending on the methodologies. In this paper, we evaluate the technological capabilities using patent synthetic indicators, paper synthetic indicators, and composite technology level evaluation of patent and paper synthetic indicators in mobile communications technology (3G, 3G transitional, and 4G) among countries (US, EU, Japan, China, and Korea). We also conduct an empirical study to validate the technology level evaluation measures. This research will offer more objective technology level evaluation than a subjective expert or peer surveys.