Matrices of science and technology interactions: implications for development

Scientific and other non-patent references (NPRs) in patents are important tools to analyze interactions between science and technology. This paper organizes a database with 514,894 USPTO patents granted globally in 1974, 1982, 1990, 1998 and 2006. There are 165,762 patents with at least one reference to science and engineering (S&E) literature, and there are 1,375,503 references. In 2006 there are 83 countries with USPTO patent citing S&E literature. Through a lexical analysis 71.1% of this S&E literature is classified by S&E fields. These data underscore the elaboration of global and national tri-dimensional matrices (by OST technological domains, ISI science and engineering fields and number of references). Descriptive statistics investigate how science and technology linkages differ over time across countries and across levels of development. This paper highlights how the existence (or not) of a pattern of structured growth differentiates mature and immature systems of innovation.