The Direct Measurement of Technological Innovation in Business

Measuring technological innovation has always been difficult for economists and other social scientists. It is a typical case of discrete units: a real innovation is different from any other. If two innovations are identical, one of them will be the real innovation, the other an imitation. Although multiple inventions, innovations and discoveries do occur very often, we still are concerned with the "new" component of a certain technological device or idea, and this - to be really new - cannot be identical to another one. There is not any other economic variable with such a high diversity at the very core of the data gathering. It is difficult to find cases where you have to compare units so different such as a jet engine, a chemical formula, an electricity power plant and a hair pin. But this would not be a major economic problem by itself. Other statistics are also built on the ground of different units.