Corporate Invention Board

The population of industrial groups analysed initially relied on the 2008 edition of “Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard” produced by the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies of the European commission. This annual study analyzes the performances of the largest R&D annual spending groups. In total, it analyses 2000 industrial companies (1000 based within the European Union, 1000 based outside of it).

This initial group was supplemented in two ways. We added 433 Indian and Chinese companies, having declared R& D investments between 1999 and 2009. They were identified from the Compustat database. Then, we added the main assignees of patents identified in the management reports of the Worldwide Industrial Property Organization (WIPO), the European Patent Office (EPO), and the United States Patents and Trademark Office (USPTO).

These three steps provided us with a list of almost 3000 large multinational corporations, which coming from several sources, needed further processing since some companies could have been be identified through several sources and because of industrial mergers’ dynamic.

The Corporate Invention Board project uses the Orbis financial information database edited by the Bureau van Dijk Electronic Publishing to establish the groups’ perimeter. For that matter, we identify in Orbis their “Global Ultimate Owner” (GUO). We could thus locate doubloons between the entries. They could happen in two cases: presence of a company in several of the blocks constitutive of the initial population (this possibility results from the three step procedure presented above) and/or mergers and acquisitions within a given industrial group. This process leads us to a definitive list of companies of nearly 2400 groups.

The Orbis financial database is then used to delineate the perimeter of these industrial groups. To aggregate related entities (subsidiaries, mergers and acquisitions processes), we use the GUO criteria. The latter considers that when a GUO’ share in a company is higher than 50,01%, the entity is considered a subsidiary of the GUO. Following this procedure, we identify nearly 170.000 subsidiary companies assumed as constitutive of these industrial groups.

The procedure that leads to the geographical and industry definitions of industrial groups is in line with the Institute for Technological Studies (IPTS) of the European commission “Industrial R& D Prospective Investment Scoreboard”.

Industrial group citizenship is given according to the location of its general headquarters. Countries are then aggregated, firstly within larger geographical areas and secondly into continents.

Industry affectation of an industrial group is made on a single basis according to the classification ICB (Industry Classification Benchmark) developed by Dow Jones and the Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE): they count 41 industrial sectors, regrouped into 18 super sectors, themselves regrouped into 10 industries.