Chapter 6: Science & Engineering Indicators 93

Chapter Organization

U.S. technology development and competitiveness span activities and issues that cannot be fully explored in the present context. Instead, this chapter presents several sets of indicators that provide measures of national activity and international standing in these areas.

The chapter begins with a review of market competitiveness of manufactured products that incorporate high levels of R& D, produced by what are often referred to as high-technology industries.(Click here for footnote 2.) The importance of high-tech industries is linked to their high R& D spending and performance which produce innovations that "spill over" into other economic sectors and because they help to train new scientists, engineers, and other technical personnel (see Tyson 1992). The market competitiveness of a nation's technological advances, as embodied in new products and processes associated with these industries, can also serve as an indicator of the effectiveness of that country's S& T enterprise. The marketplace provides a commercial-based evaluation of a country's use of science and technology.

U.S. high-tech industry competitiveness is assessed through an examination of market share trends in both foreign and domestic markets. New data on royalties, fees, and technology agreements are used to gauge U.S. competitiveness in terms of intangible (intellectual) property and technological know-how.

The chapter then explores several leading indicators of technology development (1) via an examination of changing emphases in industrial R& D among the major industrialized countries and (2) through an extensive analysis of patenting trends. New information on international patenting trends of U.S. and foreign inventors in several important technologies is presented.

The role of small business in high-technology industries is then next, primarily through new information on the technology areas that seem to attract new business formations, generate employment and export activity, and attract foreign capital.

The chapter concludes with a presentation of new leading indicators that are designed to identify those countries with the potential to become more important exporters of high-technology products over the next 15 years. Current data availability limits this discussion to an examination of the high-tech potential of several Asian countries.

Footnote 2:
There is no single preferred methodology for identifying high-technology industries. The identification of those industries considered to be high-tech has generally relied on some calculation comparing R& D intensities. R& D intensity, in turn, has typically been determined by comparing industry R& D expenditures and/or numbers of technical people employed (i.e., scientists, engineers, technicians) to industry value added or the total value of its shipments. In this chapter, high-tech industries are identified using R& D intensities calculated by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

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