Canada’s changing innovation landscape

Our objective is to study Canada’s patenting activity over time in aggregate terms by destination country, by assignee and destination country, and by diversification by country of destination. We collect bibliographic patent data from the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and the United States Patent and Trademark Office. We identify 19,957 matched Canada–US patents, 34,032 Canada-only patents, and 43,656 US-only patents from 1980 to 2014. Telecommunications dominates in terms of International Patent Classification technologies for US-only and Canada–US patents. At the firm level, the greatest number of matched Canada–US patents were granted in the field of telecommunications, at the university level in pharmaceuticals, at the government level in control and instrumentation technology, and at the individual level in civil engineering. We use entropy to quantify technological diversification and find that diversification indices decline over time for Canada and the USA; however, all US indices decline at a faster rate.

Cyborg ethics and regulation: ethical issues of human enhancement

Contemporary technological developments undermine the core pillars defining the human self, under the emergence of cyborgs and super-empowered individuals. The pre-determined boundaries between humans and machines may turn obsolete with the consolidation of the new hybrid humanity. This may foster an innovative approach to the traditional understanding of human ethics and the establishment of cyborg norms and regulations. In this article, the primordial nexus between cyborg ethics and the eugenics movement is further analyzed, hence as enhancing catalysators of mankind. Moreover, the article raises an ethical decision-making diagram, in which the normative cyborgs debate is framed in terms of positive and negative eugenic regimes. This analysis aims at providing a clearer understanding of cyborg-related ethical decision-making and the ways it magnifies eugenic features. As technological components become an inherent part of the human body, the international community should adhere to reshaping the notion of cyborg ethics and its ethical and regulatory implications.

Technological structure network analysis to explore the hotspots of academic patents in international technology transfer

International technology transfer is a determinant of a country’s national revenue and economic growth. Technology exported through international technology transfer can be the factor that gives a country a competitive edge. Therefore, investigation of international technology transfer has become essential. With the role of universities in innovation changing, academic patents have increased significantly over the past 10 years. Thus, this study used academic patents involved in international technology transfer as a basis for analysis and attempted to identify technological hotspots through a technological structure network analysis. The results indicated that key technologies in academic patent–based international technology transfer networks were mainly concentrated on measurement, nanotechnology, medical technology, biotechnology, and electric digital data processing. An academic patent technological hotspot network model was established to serve as a reference for academic technology transfers as well as for governments in their promotion of emerging technologies.

The more the merrier? Inventor team size, diversity, and innovation quality

Although teamwork shows stronger innovation ability than individuals and this advantage has been increasing over time, the negative effects of larger teams also appear as the number of inventor members increases. This study discusses the double-edged sword role of inventor teams in innovation quality at two extremes: the high quality and the low quality. We argue that, inventor team size influences innovation quality because diversity works in the evolutionary process of innovation, but different types of diversity play distinct moderating roles in these relationships. Using patent data from the US pharmaceutical industry, empirical results show that there is an inverted U-shape relationship between inventor team size and high-quality innovation, and a negative relationship between inventor team size and low-quality innovation. These relationships are moderated at different degree by technological and geographic diversity. Our findings contribute to existing literature of innovation and also provide meaningful implications for innovation management.