The outcome of innovation activities and public research funding are frequently measured quantitatively with patents or new products. The quality (newness and impact) of these inventions is left out in these definitions. Most innovations (patents) combine knowledge from closely related technologies. Development along such narrow technological paths is mostly incremental and does not unleash long-term economic potential. Innovation at the intersection of technologies, however, combines knowledge from quite different sources and therefore leads to more radical change. The project funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) seeks to develop a new set of indicators to combine the “(un)predictability” of a technological development with its impact on subsequent development. Hereby, the degree of “radicality” of an innovation becomes quantifiable. Another task is to identify actors who drive radical change and their intra- and interregional network, especially considering the role of technology policy and its influence on the development of radical innovations. From a political point of view, the project refers to the EU “Smart-Specialization-Strategy” based on the theory of path-dependent regional development. With an evolutionary analysis of the technology space (the relatedness of all technologies to each other), the project seeks to identify basic technologies that have a structural importance for its development. In the end, the project shall advance the knowledge about regional diversification and help to further improve the strategy for the German national innovation system.
