| Abstract: | The twentieth century dynamics of United States regional invention trends are explored in this study. Historically, regions that become major loci of invention have always gained much influence, through innovation diffusion, their human capital infrastructures, and their national economic and political projection. The United States has experienced a remarkable inversion of regional roles on invention since the middle of the twentieth century, where the predominant position of heartland regions (the Northeast and the Midwest) is being overturned. This analysis develops a macro-level measure of inventive output, innovative capacity, to evaluate changes in regional inventive performance and the potential for innovation. The analysis of patent age cycles provides insights on the temporal structure of the national and regional innovative capacity, and on the dynamics of crisis periods for U.S. scientific and technological invention. A consideration of regional income trends over the twentieth century and of innovative capacity performance shows the potential importance of endogenously generated inventions for regional development. |
