Urban economic fitness and complexity from patent data
Scientific Reports volume 13
Matteo Straccamore, Matteo Bruno, Bernardo Monechi & Vittorio Loreto
Abstract
Over the years, the growing availability of extensive datasets about registered patents allowed researchers to get a deeper insight into the drivers of technological innovation. This work investigates how patents’ technical contents characterize metropolitan areas’ development and how innovation is related to GDP per capita. Exploiting worldwide data from 1980 to 2014, and through network-based techniques that only use information about patents, we identify coherent distinguished groups of metropolitan areas, either clustered in the same geographical area or similar in economic features. Moreover, we extend the notion of coherent diversification to patent production and show how it is linked to the economic growth of metropolitan areas. Our findings draw a picture in which technological innovation can play a key role in the economic development of urban regions. We contend that the tools introduced in this paper can be used further to explore the interplay between urban growth and technological innovation.