Abstract:
There is strong evidence that the productivity per capita of cities and regions increases with population. One likely factor behind this phenomenon is agglomeration; densely populated regions are able to bring together otherwise unlikely combinations of individuals and organisations with diverse, specialised capabilities. But clearly not all possible combinations of capability are equally valuable, nor are they equally likely. In order to investigate patterns in the typical combinations of capabilities, we have used the REGPAT patent database to construct a bipartite network of geographic regions and the patent classes for which those regions display a revealed comparative advantage. By identifying the pairs of patent classes that are most likely to co-occur within regions, we can infer relationships between the classes, giving a new network that maps out the structure of technical innovation. The resulting network has a core-periphery structure with a central group of highly connected technologies surrounded by branches of more specialised combinations. We investigate measures such as the diversity of regional patent portfolios and the ubiquity of patent classes across regions. We find that diversity is positively correlated with regional population, while the average ubiquity of patents in a region’s patent portfolio is negatively correlated. This suggests that more populous regions are able to expand into more specialised and higher value parts of the patent network.