allied products, machinery, and professional and 

 scientific instruments. In the United Kingdom, 

 aircraft was the principal area in which the 

 innovations were found, whereas those of West 

 Germany were primarily in machinery. In- 

 novations originating in Japan were most often 

 in primary metals or in the broad area of 

 electrical equipment and communication. French 

 innovations were least concentrated, tending to 

 occur in a variety of areas. 



Invention and innovation. The inventions 

 (i.e., the first conception of the innovations) 

 originate, for the most part, in the same country 

 as the innovation; 91 percent of all the in- 

 novations included in this study were based on 

 domestic inventions. The proportion of each 

 country's innovations which resulted from its 

 own inventions ranged from a high of 100 

 percent in France to a low of 79 percent for West 

 Germany, with the United States at 93 percent. 



The time between invention and innovation 

 ranged from less than one year to 81 years 

 among the present set of major new products 

 and processes. The mean numbers of years in the 

 invention-innovation interval are shown in 

 figure 1-13 for the various countries. (It should 

 be noted that the date of invention is often 

 difficult to determine precisely). 



Figure 1-13 



Interval Between Invention and Innovation, 



for Selected Countries, 1953-73 



(Number of Yeats) 

 12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 



United States 



Japan 



West Gemany 



France 



United Kingdom 



1953-62 ' 



M 1963-73 



' Refers to the date of the innovation 



- Sampie size does not affovv calculation of the time interval 



SOURCE; Gellman Research Associates. Inc. 



In the most recent period, 1963-73, Japan had 

 the shortest period between invention and 

 market introduction (3.6 years), followed by 

 West Germany (5.6 years), the United States (6.4 

 years), France (7.3 years), and the United 

 Kingdom (7.5 years). 



"Radicalness" of the innovations. Innovations 

 may embody technologies which range from 

 imitations of existing technologies to radical 

 breakthroughs. To investigate this aspect, each 

 innovation was classified by the innovating 

 company into one of the following five 

 categories: "no new knowledge required", 

 "imitation of existing technology", "improve- 

 ment of existing technology", "major 

 technological advance", and "radical 

 breakthrough". Only 22 of the 369 innovations 

 for which such data were acquired were assigned 

 to the first two categories; these innovations are 

 excluded from the following analysis. The 

 distribution of the remaining innovations 

 among the other three categories is presented in 

 figure 1-14. 



The largest proportion of innovations in the 

 five countries combined were classified as major 

 technological advances (37 percent), followed by 

 improvements in existing technology (35 per- 

 cent), and radical breakthroughs (29 percent). 

 The innovations originating in the United States 

 were a relatively balanced mix of the three types, 

 whereas innovations of the United Kingdom 

 were most often characterized as radical 

 breakthroughs. France, West Germany, and 

 Japan were similar in that their innovations were 

 most often considered to be major technological 

 advances. 



These indicators are particularly inexact for all 

 countries other than the United States because 

 of the small number of innovations involved. 

 Furthermore, only the U.S. innovations were 

 numerous enough to permit the determination 

 of trends, which indicate that the percentage of 

 radical innovations declined nearly 50 percent 

 between the 1953-59 and 1967-73 periods, while 

 those representing major technological advances 

 doubled. The decline in radical innovations was 

 due to a smaller number of such innovations 

 from the electrical equipment and communica- 

 tion, and the machinery industries. 



Technical "know-how" 



The extent to which nations purchase the 

 technical "know-how" (e.g., patents, licenses. 



20 



