IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/defpea/v34y2023i8p1091-1109.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Technological Emergence and Military Technology Innovation

Author

Listed:
  • Jon Schmid

Abstract

To what extent is military technology innovation emergent? This study answers this question by applying an emergence detection algorithm to roughly 300,000 technical terms extracted from military technology patents granted from 1980 to 2019. Emergence – instances of sudden and rapid growth of a technical term within the military patent corpus – is found to vary greatly over time. Military technology innovation during the period of 1996-2008 is found to be highly emergent. This period was found to be characterized by high organization-type diversity; non-traditional vendors, traditional defense contractors, large civilian-facing firms, and individuals generated military patents containing many novel emergent technical terms. However, in recent years, military technology innovation has exhibited markedly less emergence. The period of low emergence is characterized by reduced contributions by non-traditional vendors, defense prime contractors, and individual inventors to military patents containing emergent terms. These observations suggest that policies attempting to ensure a healthy defense innovation ecosystem should seek organization-type diversity and may benefit from employing promotion strategies targeted at distinct organization types.

Suggested Citation

  • Jon Schmid, 2023. "Technological Emergence and Military Technology Innovation," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(8), pages 1091-1109, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:defpea:v:34:y:2023:i:8:p:1091-1109
    DOI: 10.1080/10242694.2022.2076339
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/10242694.2022.2076339
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/10242694.2022.2076339?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:defpea:v:34:y:2023:i:8:p:1091-1109. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/GDPE20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.