A framework for assessing innovation collaboration partners and its application to BRICs

In this paper, we develop a framework for assessing innovation collaboration partners. Based on the studies explaining theinternationalisation of inventive activity, we identify four elements that are drivers of innovation collaboration: inventivecapacity, technological specialization patterns, openness to international innovation collaboration and the economic potential oftechnology. In order to make the framework operational, we propose a set of patent-based indicators that capture the relevantelements. This way the proposed framework serves as a tool to both assess the potential of inventive collaboration and toanticipate benefits of such a collaboration. In a second step, we apply the framework to the analysis of the attractiveness ofBRIC countries as potential partners for innovation collaboration. Our analysis shows that BRICs differ not only in terms ofinventive performance, but also in terms of their openness to international collaboration, or the economic potential oftechnology developed by these countries.