Think back to the year 2000--the new millenium, the Y2K bug, the looming internet bust. Can you remember what you thought and how you felt back then?
If someone had asked you to predict what technology areas would grow the fastest over the next five years, what would you have predicted? (I'm glad I didn't publish my thoughts then...)
The World Intellectual Property Organisation has kindly catalogued and tabled international patent activity for the years 2001-2005, and has even charted average annual growth.
Perhaps because of the Y2K bug, 2001 saw the absolute peak in patents filed for IT methods for management. There was an annual 10% drop in patent filings in this area over the next 5 years. Most other IT-related patent filings grew by about 5% per year, which is quite robust.
Chemistry did badly. In 11 categories, 8 saw absolute declines, including biotechnology. Only pharmaceuticals saw growth, and it was a paltry 1.7% per year. (In case you're wondering why all the big pharmaceutical companies are eating each other, it's because the IP cupboard is bare...)
Mechanical engineering didn't do much better. Of 8 categories, three showed negative growth and the other 5 grew slowly, with the exception of transport, which managed 3.8%.
So what was the overall winner? The biggest growth? The scientific advances that should now be showing up in the products and services we are buying today?
Second was optics, with 5% annual growth, and 103,390 patent filings in 2005. First, predictably, was computer technology, with 5.3% growth and 144,594 patent filings.
What this tells me as a back-of-the-envelope analyst is that Moore's Law will continue, that there's a bit of hype in biotech, that I don't want to own stock in pharmaceuticals, but the next generation of transportation equipment might change, for the better and the greener. Hasten the day.
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