How fast is online learning evolving? Are wind turbines a
promising investment? And how long before a cheap hoverboard makes it to
market?
Attempting to answer such questions requires knowing
something about the rate at which a technology is improving. Now engineers at MIT
have devised a formula for estimating how fast a technology is advancing, based
on information gleaned from relevant patents.
The researchers determined the improvement rates of 28
different technologies, including solar photovoltaics, 3-D printing, fuel-cell
technology, and genome sequencing. They searched through the U.S. Patent Office
database for patents associated with each domain — more than 500,000 total — by
developing a novel method to quickly and accurately select the patents that
best represent each technology.
Once these were identified, the researchers analyzed certain
metrics across patents in each domain, and found that some were more likely to
predict a technology’s improvement rate than others. In particular, forward
citations — the number of times a patent is cited by subsequent patents — is a
good predictor, as is the date of a patent’s publication: Technologies with
more recent patents are likely innovating at a faster rate than those with
older patents.
The team devised an equation incorporating a patent set’s
average forward citation and average publication date, and calculated the rate
of improvement for each technology domain. Their results matched closely with
the rates determined through the more labor-intensive approach of finding
numerous historical performance data points for each technology.
Among the 28 domains analyzed, the researchers found the
fastest-developing technologies include optical and wireless communications,
3-D printing, and MRI technology, while domains such as batteries, wind
turbines, and combustion engines appear to be improving at slower rates.
Chris Benson, a former graduate student in MIT’s Department
of Mechanical Engineering, says the new prediction tool may be of interest to
venture capitalists, startups, and government and industry labs looking to
explore new technology.
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