creased energy consumption — which may be 

 associated with the innovations. 



The innovations included in the study repre- 

 sent a wide range of product areas and industrial 

 sectors. Examples of the innovations are listed 

 below: 



Nuclear reactors 

 Oral contraceptives 

 Urethane foams 

 Electron beam welding 

 High voltage electric cables 



Automatic optical readers 



High speed electric trains 



Integrated circuits 



Lasers 



Weather satellites 



The innovations were classified according to 

 the type of market which the innovating 

 company intended for the innovation^"": 

 producer goods, consumer goods, or the govern- 

 ment (viewed as both a producer and a consumer 

 market). The innovations in total were aimed 

 principally at the producer-goods market (65 

 percent of all innovations), followed by the 

 government (19 percent), and the consumer- 

 goods market (16 percent). The following table 

 shows the distribution of innovations among the 

 three types of markets for each of the five 

 countries:-'^ 



Percent distribution of innovations 

 by type of market and country, 1953-73 



Type of market 



Country 



Producer Consumer 



goods Government goods 



United States . . 

 United Kingdom 



Japan 



West Germany . 

 France 



62 

 89 



77 

 69 

 45 



19 



2 

 16 



7 

 10 



19 

 9 



7 



24 

 45 



Major innovations by selected countries. The 



proportion of the 492 innovations produced by 

 each of the five countries is shown in figure 1-12. 

 The United States leads each of the other nations 

 by a wide margin in the percentage of major 

 innovations produced. The U.S. lead, however, 

 declined steadily from the late 1950's to the mid- 

 1960's, falling from 82 to 55 percent of the 

 innovations. The slight upturn in later years 



-' The innovation may have been introduced subsequently 

 into other markets; e.g., innovations initially directed to the 

 government may have been introduced later into another 

 market 



-'-' Innovations originating in Canada were omitted from 

 this report because they are small in number and therefore 

 cannot be analyzed in detail. 



represents a relative rather than an absolute 

 gain, and results primarily from a decline in the 

 proportion of innovations produced in the 

 United Kingdom, rather than an increase in the 

 number of U.S. innovations. The largest actual 

 gains were recorded by Japan, although its share 

 of the innovations reached only some 10 percent 

 by the early 1970's. 



The innovations as a whole covered a wide 

 range of product areas, but U.S. innovations 

 were concentrated primarily in the most R&D- 

 intensive industries, particularly: electrical 

 equipment and communications, chemicals and 



19 



