Is your country ready for Open Innovation?

Michel Neu is senior intellectuel property expert at the Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA); www.cea.fr

This article first appeared in Intellectual Asset Management (IAM) magazine issue 67, published by The IP Media Group. To view the issue in full, please go to www.iam-magazine.com.

This article highlights the strong link between innovation policies and global trade balances of countries. The study was made for nine great innovation countries: Korea, Canada, China, Austria, Germany, Japan, France, the UK and the USA. It is based on the link between Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) inflows and outflows at country level (and thereby the balance of these flows), and the global trade balance of these countries. Intellectual Property (IP) is indeed closely linked to innovation, economic growth and jobs. For the Intellectual property rights (IPR) inflows and outflows of each country, the study took the data from the World Bank Statistics: Charges for the use of intellectual property, receipts and payments, at country level.

The study has classified the countries into four categories, according to their strategy of innovation policy:

The study then analyzed the global trade balance, compared to GDP, of these countries and considered this parameter as a measure of the performance of the innovation policy of the countries. The study found that the ranking of the four categories of innovation policy according to this parameter of the global trade balance is as follow from the best one to the worst one:

Therefore, this study could have an important impact for the definition of countries innovation policies.

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Michel Neu.

• Technology broker countries: countries with both high IP rights inflow (compared to GDP) and high IPR outflow (compared to GDP), the difference between these flows (IPR trade balance) being small (compared to GDP and to the other countries): Germany, Austria.
• Technology sponge countries: countries with a high IP rights inflow (compared to GDP) and a low IPR outflow (compared to GDP) ), the difference between these flows (IPR trade balance) being high (compared to GDP and to the other countries) and positive (global net IPR absorption) : Korea, Canada, China
• Technology isolationist countries: countries with both moderate IP rights inflow (compared to GDP) and moderate IPR outflow (compared to GDP), the difference between these flows being small (compared to GDP and to the other countries): Japan.
• Technology fountain countries: countries with small or moderate IP rights inflow (compared to GDP) and high IPR outflow (compared to GDP), the difference between these flows (IPR trade balance) being high (compared to GDP and to the other countries) and negative (global net IPR leak): the USA, UK, France
  1. Technology broker countries (they have a huge positive global trade balance, compared to GDP)
  2. Technology sponge countries (they have a moderate positive global trade balance, compared to GDP)
  3. Technology isolationist countries (low positive or low negative global trade balance, compared to GDP)
  4. Technology fountains countries (they have a huge negative global trade balance, compared to GDP)