Regional recombinant novelty, related and unrelated technologies: a patent-level approach

This paper investigates the impact of regional technological relatedness on the emergence of recombinant novelty (i.e., new combinations of subclasses occurring for the first time) in French regions using patent data over the period 1990-2010. We find that relatedness favours incremental innovations that reuse already applied combinations, whereas increasing levels of relatedness reduce the likelihood of novelty. However, the impact is less negative when combined technologies are new, unrelated or not locally specialized because it facilitates learning and technological recombination. We also find that universities and large incumbents are less dependent on relatedness than small and novel players to create novelty.