Not All IT Innovations Are Equal: Evidence from Medical Device Patents

We develop a patent analysis approach to discover types of IT innovations and examine their technological and economic impacts. Our empirical investigation is based on 73,120 patents in the medical devices industry filed between 1996 and 2005. Rather than relying on pre-established classifications of IT innovations, we apply textual analysis to patent abstracts and map the extracted IT innovations into three types—generalpurpose IT, IT-embedded products, and IT-embedded processes. We analyze the technological impact (measured by 10-year forward citations) and economic impact (measured by patent maintenance fee payments) of IT innovations. We find that although all three types of IT innovations generate technological impact, generalpurpose IT innovations are more likely to generate economic value. These impacts of types of IT innovation are above and beyond the impacts of novelty and conventionality of the innovation and the disclosure strategy of information related to the innovation.