Globalization of collaborative creativity through cross-border patent activities

This study examines global collaborative creativity through patentometrics and social network analysis. Because patents are a direct output of innovative activities, cross-border patents are used to analyze the trend of global collaborative creativity. The results show linear growth of cross-border patents, while numerous inventors have grown exponentially for collaborative creativity. The number of inventors for global collaborative creativity trends have increased more rapidly than the number of patents. The network for global collaborative creativity is denser and shows a growing trend over a five-year interval. Both observed and cosine-normalized numbers of k-cores in global collaborative creativity show a growing trend, while the cosine-normalized k-cores increase slowly compared to the observed one. Similarly, the social network analysis confirms a growing network of global collaborative creativity, which is dense despite its small degree of growth. This study also found that high values of "betweenness" tend to spread from core countries to periphery countries. Collaborative creativity has globalized but remains concentrated in core countries such as the U.S., the UK, France, Germany, and Canada. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.