La​tent In​no​va​tion

The la​tent in​no​va​tion mea​sure for in​di​vid​ual coun​ties, as cited in: Goetz, Stephan J. and Yicheol Han (2019). Latent innovation in local economies. Published in Research Policy in 2019.

Read more about the research for which this data set was developed.

The variables used in the data set are defined as follows:

Conventional innovation measures uses patents, R&D spending, and science and engineering or high-tech manufacturing employment, etc. to measure innovative activities in local economies, and ignores innovation that may indirectly be essential to raising productivity or improving products. We propose a measure of latent (or hidden) innovation in local economies based on spillovers among industries in terms of inter-industry sales and purchases as well as spatial proximity. Here, latent innovation originates within supply chains from both a firm’s customers (buyers) as well as suppliers, where the former contribute to product innovation and the latter to process innovation; these are labelled as such in the attached file. Overall innovation combines process and product innovation (the first data column in the Excel file).

Latent Innovation Data

Excel 2007 spreadsheet, 169.2 KBAn Excel spreadsheet containing latent innovation data on individual U.S. counties.