Technological Catching-up and Forging Ahead in 5G: A Patent Data Analysis

Abstract This paper empirically examines technological leadership and the existence of countries in technological catching-up with the potential to become forging ahead at the 5G technological frontier. The analysis is based on a bibliometric approach for the qualitative study of the technologies that comprise 5G, and for the quantitative and qualitative construction of a dictionary of keywords representing such technologies. Following, patent families were taken as a proxy for the countries’ inventive performance, and a lexicographic search based on this dictionary was applied to identify 5G-related patent families, covering the period from 2010 to 2018. The results suggest a possible geopolitical and knowledge-base reconfiguration of the 5G architecture, with a tripartite and technologically specialized leadership shared by South Korea, United States, and China. While Japan and the United Kingdom are losing relevance in this architecture, our results suggest that India, Sweden, and Finland are undergoing a process of technological catching-up. Overall, the identification of forging-ahead and follower countries supports the understanding that catching-up is not a possibility for all but only for those that already possess a minimum level of technological development. JEL: B40, L16, L96, O33, O57