SPILLOVER EFFECTS AND THE SCIENCE BASE OF INNOVATIONS RECONSIDERED - AN EMPIRICAL-APPROACH

When quantifying spillover effects among technologies and between scie nce and technology one faces the problem that clear-cut measurement pr ocedures are difficult to define and to validate. The well-known appro ach by indexing certain outputs (patent documents) grasps only parts o f the complex and feedback innovation-oriented processes. However, rec ently, new promising lines of research for understanding technological externalities have been embarked upon. New measurements of the scienc e-technology-innovation interface are presented from three different a spects. First, the overall properties of technological spillover and, second, of science involvement in innovations are presented on a world -wide scale. The third main section of the results provides a panorami c view of scientific involvement in technology in terms of a country c omparison. The contribution attempts to add quantitative evidence for an evolutionary understanding of the externalities between public scie nce, latent public technology and private innovation.