Knowledge Flows, Patent Citations And The Impact Of Science On Technology

Technological innovation depends on knowledge developed by scientific research. The number of citations made in patents to the scientific literature has been suggested as an indicator of this process of transfer of knowledge from science to technology. The authors provide an intersectoral insight into this indicator, by breaking down patent citations into a sector-to-sector matrix of knowledge flows. They then propose a method to analyze this matrix and construct various indicators of science intensity of sectors, and the pervasiveness of knowledge flows.