Knowledge-generating efficiency in innovation systems: The acceleration of technological paradigm changes with increasing complexity

Article history: Received 22 May 2014 Received in revised form 5 December 2014 Accepted 3 April 2015 Available online 24 April 2015 Time series of US patents permillion inhabitants show cyclic structureswhich can be attributed to the different knowledge-generating paradigms that drive innovation systems. The changes in the slopes between the waves can be used to indicate efficiencies in the generation of knowledge. Whenknowledge-generating systems are associatedwith idem innovation systems, the efficiency of the latter can be modeled in terms of interactions among dimensions (for example, in terms of university–industry–government relations). The resultingmodel predicts an increase in efficiency with an increasing number of dimensions due to the effects of self-organization among them. The dynamics of the knowledge-generating cycles can be analyzed in terms of Fibonacci numbers; successive cycles are expected to exhibit shorter life cycles than previous ones. This perspective enables us to forecast the expected dates of future paradigm changes. © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.