The dandelion rubber effect: Life cycle and patenting locations in new technologies – investigating the German bioeconomy

Abstract The literature provides clear evidence that the kind, amount, and location of innovation activity changes during the life cycle of industries. However, the relevant literature in this respect focuses on large, long-existing industries such as the automobile industry, while it is unclear whether smaller technological fields show similar influences of life cycle processes on the location of innovation activity. Hence, we analyze the life cycle stages of various fields in the bioeconomy and the location of the respective innovation activity in Germany. Within the three fields of biomass, biotechnology, and biomaterials, subfields were built through a keyword-driven approach. We conduct a logit regression model to check the influence of population density, prior topic-specific patents and publications, as well as the overall patent and publication activity on the emergence of bioeconomy patents. The results indicate that the researched bioeconomy mainly follows the stylized life cycle concepts. Moreover, they show that most of the studied subfields do not integrate into existing technologies but build their own innovation systems and that bioeconomy patents rather emerge in rural areas. Interestingly, we find a deviation from the standard life cycle stages, which seems to be caused by the crossover-technology characteristics. We call it the dandelion rubber effect: After the usual initial phase, there seems to be a phase in which the possibilities of application are extended, widening the field instead of becoming more specialized and leading to a new science-based innovation activity. Furthermore, path dependence is clearly visible in bioeconomy patent locations.