arXiv subjects

Josef Taalbi

Publications and source records attributed to Josef Taalbi.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Collaboration for the Bioeconomy -- Evidence from Innovation Output in Sweden, 1970-2021

Collaboration is expected to play a central role in the transition to a bioeconomy - a central pillar of a green economy. Such collaboration is supposed to connect traditional biomass processing firms with diverse actors in fields where biomass ought to substitute existing or create novel products and processes. This study analyzes the network of technology collaborations among innovating firms in Sweden between 1970 and 2021. The results reveal generally positive associations between direct and indirect ties, with meaningful increases in innovation output for each additional direct collaboration partner. Relationships between brokerage positions and innovation output were statistically insignificant, and cognitive proximity - while following theoretical expectations - materially insignificant. These associations are mostly equal between actors heavily invested in the bioeconomy and those focusing on other innovation areas, indicating that these actors operate under largely similar mechanisms linking collaboration and subsequent innovation output. These results suggest that stimulating collaboration broadly - rather than attempting to optimize collaboration compositions - could result in higher number of significant Swedish innovations, for bioeconomy and other sectors alike.

econ.GN↗

arXiv2023

Long-run patterns in the discovery of the adjacent possible

The notion of the "adjacent possible" has been advanced to theorize the generation of novelty across many different research domains. This study is an attempt to examine in what way the notion can be made empirically useful for innovation studies. A theoretical framework is construed based on the notion of innovation a search process of recombining knowledge to discover the "adjacent possible". The framework makes testable predictions about the rate of innovation, the distribution of innovations across organizations, and the rate of diversification or product portfolios. The empirical section examines how well this framework predicts long-run patterns of new product introductions in Sweden, 1908-2016 and examines the long-run evolution of the product space of Swedish organizations. The results suggest that, remarkably, the rate of innovation depends linearly on cumulative innovations, which explains advantages of incumbent firms, but excludes the emergence of "winner takes all" distributions. The results also suggest that the rate of development of new types of products follows "Heaps' law", where the share of new product types within organizations declines over time. The topology of the Swedish product space carries information about future product diversifications, suggesting that the adjacent possible is not altogether `"unprestatable".

econ.GN↗

arXiv2022

Innovation with and without patents

A long-standing discussion is to what extent patents can be used to monitor trends in innovation activity. This study quantifies the amount and quality of information about actual innovation contained in the patent system, based on 4,460 Swedish innovations (1970-2015) that have been matched to international patents. The results show that most innovations were not patented and that among those that were, 43.9% of all innovations, only a fraction can be identified with patent quality data. The best-performing models identify 17% of all information about innovations, equivalent to an information loss of at least 83%. Econometric tests also show that the fraction of innovations responding to strengthened patent laws during the period were on average 8% percent. The overlap between the patent and innovation systems is hence more modest than often assumed. This accentuates the need to, alongside patents, develop versatile approaches in order to induce and monitor various aspects of innovation.

econ.GN↗

arXiv2018

Evolution and structure of technological systems - An innovation output network

This study examines the network of supply and use of significant innovations across industries in Sweden, 1970-2013. It is found that 30% of innovation patterns can be predicted by network stimulus from backward and forward linkages. The network is hierarchical, characterized by hubs that connect diverse industries in closely knitted communities. To explain the network structure, a preferential weight assignment process is proposed as an adaptation of the classical preferential attachment process to weighted directed networks. The network structure is strongly predicted by this process where historical technological linkages and proximities matter, while human capital flows and economic input-output flows have conflicting effects on link formation. The results are consistent with the idea that innovations emerge in closely connected communities, but suggest that the transformation of technological systems are shaped by technological requirements, imbalances and opportunities that are not straightforwardly related to other proximities.

econ.GN↗