This workshop facilitates the interaction of researchers working with patent data for the purpose of scholarship on innovation policy. The focus is on advancing and sharing knowledge on a series of technical issues including name disambiguation and matching patent data to other economically-relevant data sources.
Intellectual Merit: The workshop provides a unique forum for the exchange of patent data measurement related topics with the focus of informing innovation policy in a multi-disciplinary environment. It reduces unnecessary duplicative effort on data, measurement, and methodology, and hence increases the capacity to build both theory and for innovation policy. The workshop also advances an important SciSIP goal of creating a bridge between the academic and practitioner communities by directly engaging the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the academic community through the workshop participation of the USPTO's Chief Economist.
Broader Impact: The workshop advances the establishment of a robust data infrastructure for cumulative, transparent, and high-quality research and the ability to translate that research. It is an important step in continuing the empirical research tradition that has been built around the economic consequences of innovation. It provides an environment for high-quality high-impact research, with an emphasis on measurement. It fosters the development of a research community and research norms, and facilitates cumulative research across this community.
The study of the science of science and innovation policy has in recent years greatly increased in both volume and quality. This interest in scholarship has also, however, been accompanied by an increase in specialization (scholars operating in disciplinary silos) and the re-development of techniques, datasets, and empirical methodologies. As a result, much work and effort on the science of science and innovation policy has been spent reinventing the proverbial wheel. To overcome these barriers in the continued advancement of scholarship on the science of science and innovation policy, this project partnered with and provided support for the National Academies of Science (NAS) National Science Foundation (NSF) Science of Science and Innovation Policy (SciSIP) principal investigator (PI) conference that was held in Washing, DC between September 20th and 21st, 2012. The major topics covered at the conference were implementing science policy; scientific discovery processes; human capital; organizations, institutions, and networks; innovation; data extraction and measurement; mapping science; and assessment and program evaluation. Three goals were reached through the conference. First, PIs of expired grants were able to discuss/inform/debate with PIs of active grants, thus bridging PIs across cohorts. Second, the conference provided a forum that facilitated the creation of new collaborative relationships for scholars with different theoretical backgrounds, methods, and techniques. And third, because many of the participants of the conference would not have otherwise interacted, the conference allowed for the cross-fertilization of ideas across disciplines.
