Interdisciplinary research and technological change.

Li, B., Chen, S., Larivière, V. (2026) Interdisciplinary research and technological change. Technological Forecasting & Social Change, 225, 124537.     

This study investigates the relationship between interdisciplinary research and technological change, using paper-patent citations. Technological change is defined as the extent to which a technology consolidates or disrupts existing technologies, patents can be categorized into three types: destabilizing, consolidating, and moderating. Drawing on all journal articles published in 2002 and indexed in the Web of Science database and all patents from the USPTO, our study reveals that research papers have a relatively minor impact on destabilizing patents compared to moderating and consolidating patents. Particularly noteworthy is the significant contribution of papers in the field of Biomedical Research to technological advancements. Analyzing distinct dimensions of interdisciplinary research—variety, balance, disparity, and the Rao-Stirling index—we find that destabilizing patent citations decrease with both variety and the Rao-Stirling index increase. The correlation with balance exhibits a U-shaped relationship, but we observe no significant relationship with disparity. Moreover, consolidating patent citations demonstrate an increase with disparity and the Rao-Stirling index, while showing a decrease in relation to balance, but no negligible association is found with variety. Moderate patent citations increase with both variety and balance, and decrease with both disparity and the Rao-Stirling index.

Ce contenu a été mis à jour le 18 juin 2026 à 14 h 13 min.