An empirical evaluation of the technology cycle-time indicator as a measure of the pace of technological progress in the superconductor technology

Today, more than ever, the field of management of technology and innovation is in need of valid technology measures. The Technology Cycle Time indicator (TCT), developed by CHI Research Inc., is a new technology indicator based on patent citations. The TCT is the median age of the patents cited on the front page of a patent document. This technique uses the linkage between an invention and the prior knowledge that is most closely related to it. It is assumed that the lower the age of the cited patents, the more quickly one generation of inventions is replacing another. Technological change theories describe this phenomena as the rate of technological progress.;The main purpose of the study was to evaluate the TCT in a dynamic context to determine how accurate it was measuring the pace of technological progress in the superconductor technology field. The researcher used the reports of experts to establish a base line regarding the pace of technological progress in the superconductor technology. The base line provided the general frame work depicting this pace of progress from year 1974 to 1994. In this study, the TCT was calculated from patents gathered by the US Patent & Trademark Office and identified as inventions relating to the superconductor technology. The TCT was then calculated for each year of the period to see if the values corresponded with the pace of technological progress described by the technology experts.;The study also investigated some of the factors believed to be affecting the measure, in order to improve it for future uses. Furthermore, the study illustrated the uses of a dynamic TCT in various settings.;The main conclusions drawn from this study were: (1) the TCT was a valid measure for the pace of technological progress in the superconductor technology, (2) its values were directly related to the age of the references, but not correlated with the number of references cited in the patents, (3) potentially the methodology prescribed in this study could be used in assessing the pace of progress for different technologies, or different nations in the same technology.