Small Firms Remain Important Innovators
Nov 17th, 2008 | By Dawn Rivers Baker | Category: ResearchNow that the Bush Administration is a little over two months away from its swan song and objective science may once again become fashionable in the nation’s capital, a particularly timely report reminds us that, high on the list of nice-things-small-firms-do is to develop the technologies that often solve our problems, make us money and generally make life better. The report in question, “An Analysis of Small Business Patents by Industry and Firm Size,” was released last week by the SBA Office of Advocacy.
As has been found in previous research, small firms were found to produce more patents per employee than larger firms. Small firms had an average of 26.5 patents per employee, compared with 1.7 patents per employee for larger firms. Interestingly, that same trend holds for smaller slices of the database population as well. Firms with 15 employees had more patents per employee than those with 25 employees, and those with 25 employees had more patents per employee than those with 50 employees. Small firm patents were also found to outperform large firm patents in a number of impact metrics, which suggests that they are more technologically important. Given the number of challenges facing our nation that seem to call for technology solutions, it seems clear that small business technology support should be a high priority for the new Administration.
