Abstract
After presentation of the various results in the preceding chapter, the discussion will provide guidance through the often elaborate but noisy results and direct toward the most important findings.
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Notes
- 1.
See Sect. 4.3.5 for a short discussion of the literature on Cosmeceuticals.
- 2.
This research consolidation refers to intellectual property in the form of patents and scientific articles.
- 3.
As already discussed in Sect. 4.3, health claims of NFF are also in the center of attention. But more generally, their effects are not per se as much debated as in cosmetics, scientific articles focus rather on potential negative side effects and dose questions (and do not question an effect at all).
- 4.
This tighter regulation, when compared to cosmetics, is largely caused by the greater importance of nutrition and its effects on people’s health, thus calling for much more science-based testing. Undoubtedly, most substances will have much stronger effects on the human body when incorporated orally than when topically applied.
- 5.
Where next to the theoretical introduction also empirical data on developments around computerized numerical control (CNC) machine tool technology is presented. See also [2, p. 983 ], discussing that “patent growth generally follows a similar trend that can resemble s-shaped growth”.
- 6.
As this assignment is not conducted by patent authorities but by CAS, it cannot be fully excluded that there is a bias towards less cross-classifications.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
Future studies should analyze whether such a specialization-convergence-specialization pattern can also be found in other converging areas. Generally, convergence should not be viewed as a static situation, but rather as a highly dynamic process with changing momentum and impact. Most likely will convergence in NFF and in ICT also be followed by a later separation of different industrial foci. This is in line with the reasoning in Chap. 2 and bears more analogy to a reshuffling (of industry segments) than a melting into one unified industry.
- 10.
Nevertheless, it would be interesting to analyze the effect of such adjustments. As is done in the optimization of, e.g., fermentation media for bacteria, ideally design of experiments should be used to find the maximum difference caused by different combinations of the parameters.
- 11.
Concentration rates are: 92 % in personal care, 48 % in food, 52 % in pharmaceuticals, and 35 % in chemicals.
- 12.
This approach has been suggested by other scholars as well.
- 13.
These companies play a specifically important role in the increasingly consolidated food and pharmaceutical industries. See, e.g., [9, p. 13].
- 14.
See Sect. 3.3.1 for a description of differences between Europe, the USA and Japan.
- 15.
This could be tested in future studies by comparing UK results to patenting patterns from other European countries.
- 16.
To generate references for both types of patents the super search field ‘PCS’ (patent country group, which is a combination of PC = patent country and DS = designated states) instead of ‘PC’ (patent country) has to be used additionally. As explicitly all applications and granted patents in each of the respective countries was to be sampled, this was not done in this study.
- 17.
See Sect. 3.3.1.
- 18.
The share grew from 5 % in both IPC clusters at the beginning of the 1990s to over 25 % at the end of the 2000s in food patents and around 10 % in pharmaceuticals patents.
- 19.
IPC classification is contained in the INPADOCDB file only as of the early 1970s for most countries. Hence, more Japanese patents exist on food and pharmaceuticals in the years prior to 1970, but will not be returned when searching INPADOCDB based on IPCs. However, there is no reason to believe in a decisively different pattern if all patents could have been included in the analyses.
- 20.
Although it has to be borne in mind that technology convergence does not have to be followed by complete industry convergence, it is still a likely connection. See also Sect. 2.4.
- 21.
The considerable interest in the pharmaceutical industry is also reflected in M&A activities between the chemical and the pharmaceutical industry.
- 22.
Interestingly, this difference was found for both phytosterols samples. This would indicate an intrinsic difference between developments in phytosterols (apparently appearing a little later) and NFF as a whole.
- 23.
See Sect. 6.3 for a thorough assessment of the applicability of the different measures and data sources.
- 24.
See Sect. 4.3.1 for a definition of Nutraceuticals and Functional Foods.
- 25.
As the study at hand is focusing on developments in NFF and has only reported on developments around Cosmeceuticals where they were an inherent part of NFF developments, these results were not part of Chap. 5. As they can shed some light on the structure of convergence in NFF, they are presented here.
- 26.
Due to the similar numbers, the order of magnitude would be similar from a food patents’ perspective.
- 27.
Although caution should be exerted in this assessment, as the samples were created on the basis of publication years not priority years. So a ‘trailing’ Japanese development may be caused by more recent patenting activities or by the fact that patent applications and granted patents need longer to be published at the JPO than at the UK or US patent office. See also Sect. 3.2.1, for a description of the different backlogs.
- 28.
This, of course, only refers to the larger and more important patent countries. When employing patent samples from very small patent offices, they might indeed differ significantly.
- 29.
Especially in light of the emphasis on practical applicability this would have been counterproductive.
- 30.
For patents, it is on the one hand highly doubtable that any assignee would voluntarily limit his claims to a certain subclass of phytosterols. On the other hand, patent examiners would surely regard a patent on one subclass as potentially harmful to the patent newness of a patent on a different subclass. Although such a limitation to a subclass is slightly more likely in scientific articles, even there most authors would probably refer to the more general class as well or point out potential applications based on related substances.
- 31.
As outlined in Sect. 5.2.1, INPADOCDB does of course not encompass all published patents in the world. But building on over 90 patent-issuing organizations and with by now more than 55 million documents in its records, it does cover nearly all patents and especially all that can be expected to be of considerable value.
- 32.
See Sect. 5.1.1.1 for more information on the coverage of CAplus and MEDLINE.
- 33.
While there may be many different reasons for such a choice, including a shortened time horizon until publication, a too novel approach for established journals, the wish to assist in installing a new and more focused journal or a topic (which had been too specialized for the established journals). For further discussion of reasons and rationales in publishing see Sect. 3.2.
- 34.
Initial visualization in STN AnaVist includes the importing of the sample into the program to allow for all subsequent visualizations and analyses.
- 35.
For instance calculations of co-authorships or co-classifications.
- 36.
For instance the creation of research landscapes.
- 37.
This is reinforced by the incurred costs, which will be too high for most academic researchers and also potentially deterrent for practitioners, especially when thinking of a set of visualizations recurring regularly.
- 38.
See, e.g., Sect. 6.3.1.1.
- 39.
While other countries also play decisive roles in selected technological areas (especially Japan in NFF), the USA can undoubtedly be asserted to be overall a dominant economic player.
- 40.
- 41.
See Sect. 3.3.1 for a description of differences between USPC and IPC.
- 42.
One way to heal potential translation illnesses would be to refrain from using IPCs and instead use USPC. While the USPC has other weaknesses, such as the re-introduction of discontinued notations or the lack of a concordance list for notation changes over time, the main problem would be a further decrease in comparability between different patent countries. [cf. 8, p. 292].
- 43.
The same, in principle, holds true for SciFinder and STN AnaVist, as long as other programs with a comparable architecture and resulting functionalities are concerned.
- 44.
[8, p. 300].
- 45.
See Sect. 2.4 for a discussion of the sequential nature of industry convergence and its various forms and aspects.
- 46.
See Chap. 3 for differences between forecasting, foresight, and anticipation activities.
- 47.
See Sects. 2.3 and 4.3 for examples of converging industries.
- 48.
See Sect. 2.1.4 for this study’s definition of convergence and its delineation from fusion.
- 49.
See Sect. 2.2 for the different aspects around the classification of triggers and drivers.
- 50.
See Sect. 2.4 for an explanation of this sequential process of industry convergence.
- 51.
See Sect. 3.1.2 for a reasoning of the anticipation approach.
- 52.
See especially Sects. 3.2.3 and 3.3.3 for a brief description of these analyses can be used in the current study.
- 53.
Of course, this in principal also applies to converging technologies and markets. However, these two steps are not as immediately represented by human actors and their interests and are thus of subordinate importance in this context.
- 54.
See Sect. 4.1 for theories applied in the convergence literature.
- 55.
Regulation in this context explicitly refers to all kinds of, e.g., laws, policies, incentives or funding, as are decided on and introduced by public authorities.
- 56.
Naturally, it is not the companies themselves who are making the decision but rather the managers. For increased legibility, this study uses firm or company as a short form of ‘managers of a firm’.
- 57.
For a detailed discussion of how path-dependent internal rigidities influence firms’ decision making especially in settings of convergence, see [16].
- 58.
See, e.g., Sect. 3.1.1 for the impact of convergence on companies.
- 59.
For important aspects regarding collaboration, especially in research-intensive industries see, e.g., [21].
- 60.
This would be a perfect example of how the different approaches to anticipate convergence could be employed within one specific case. While an IPC co-classification and subsequent analyses on the basis of tens or hundreds of thousands of patents (and partly scientific articles) could serve as an early warning signal, this could be followed by more detailed and content oriented analyses of smaller samples to identify key research streams, institutions and individual researchers.
- 61.
While this may be important in any setting, these availabilities are particularly crucial in areas of ICT, the pharmaceutical and the chemical industry. See Sects. 2.3.1 for a description of the setting in ICT and 2.3.4 and 4.3 for the pharmaceutical industry and NFF. See also [22], for a brief discussion of the setting in the chemical and materials industry and the role of access to renewable raw materials.
- 62.
Undeniably have three smartphones shaped consumers’ preferences and expectations at different points in time. The Nokia Communicator was one of the first smartphones, which proved the possibilities of this new category to mainly a limited number of business customers. Later RIM’s BlackBerry introduced typical business functionalities to a large group of business managers and started to get more and more private customers interested. Finally, the Apple iPhone was adopted by the mass market based on design, reputation and functionalities.
- 63.
See Sect. 3.4 for a short overview of potential measures and data sources for each step of the sequential convergence process.
- 64.
This refers to, e.g., addressed therapeutic areas in the pharmaceutical industry or certain product ranges in the food industry. While there is a constant flow of activities in respect to diversification or concentration, these developments are largely more incremental than radical changes.
- 65.
See, e.g., Niedergassel who reports on the difficulties to align academics’ interests/research foci/procedures with those of other academics and especially industrial partners.
- 66.
While they will in most cases be academic researchers, they may be also affiliated with companies, research institutions or public authorities. Although not explicitly mentioned, they are implicitly addressed as well in subsequent paragraphs.
- 67.
See Sect. 6.4.1 for theoretical contributions of this study.
- 68.
See also Sect. 2.3 for further examples of fading industry boundaries in different industries.
- 69.
See Sects. 3.2 and 3.3 for a discussion of the benefits and drawbacks of citation-based analyses.
- 70.
A granted patent may not be valid anymore due to, e.g., the non-payment of fees or appeals by other stakeholders.
- 71.
For instance, a publication is either co-authored by authors from two areas or not. Consequently, a larger number of co-authors will (in most cases) not reflect a closer collaboration but rather involvement of more researchers resulting from, e.g., more complex methods..
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Curran, CS. (2013). Discussion of Findings and Implications for Theory and Practice. In: The Anticipation of Converging Industries. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-5170-8_6
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