Prospects and trends in the development of terahertz technologies: patent landscape

The article is dedicated to the analysis of areas where terahertz radiation is applicable with the hwlp of a patent papers review, as well as to obtaining knowledge about the invention activity changes in this area over the past 35 years.Orbit patent databases’ capabilities were used to complete this analysis. Data search was conducted by keywords “terahertz” or “THz.” The searches were neither limited by submission dates, by priorities, nor by the country. A comprehensive analysis will allow to determine a more than 7389 patent-analog families’ aplications submitted in the period between 1980 and 2017 years. Statistical processing of obtained documents has been completed with the assistance of program software, indicated in the database. It was revealed that terahertz technologies have significant prospects to be applied in various areas; a fact, that is confirmed by an identified range of fields, where electromagnetic radiation of terahertz spectrum is applicable and is constantly growing. The dynamics of patenting is characterized by annual stable positive growth in the number of applications for inventions in the researched area. The highest number of inventions was identified in the field of instrumentation technologies, optics, telecommunications, semiconductor technologies, and medicine. Additionally, there was analyzed the state of patenting over the course of last five years. Examples of inventions were given. There were identified leading countries and companies in the researched area.

Creative Destruction and Asset Prices

We relate Schumpeter’s notion of creative destruction to asset pricing, thereby offering a novel explanation of size and value premia. We argue that small-value firms must offer higher expected returns to compensate for the risk posed by serendipitous invention activity, whereas large-growth stocks provide protection against creative destruction and receive expected return discounts. A 2-factor model that accounts for creative-destruction risk effectively explains the cross-sectional return variation of size- and book-to-market-sorted portfolios. The estimated risk compensations associated with creative destruction are substantial and statistically significant, indicating their relevance for asset pricing.

Using Invention to Change How Students Tackle Problems

Invention activities challenge students to tackle problems that superficially appear unrelated to the course material but illustrate underlying fundamental concepts that are fundamental to material that will be presented. During our invention activities in a first-year biology class, students were presented with problems that are parallel to those that living cells must solve, in weekly sessions over a 13-wk term. We compared students who participated in the invention activities sessions with students who participated in sessions of structured problem solving and with students who did not participate in either activity. When faced with developing a solution to a challenging and unfamiliar biology problem, invention activity students were much quicker to engage with the problem and routinely provided multiple reasonable hypotheses. In contrast the other students were significantly slower in beginning to work on the problem and routinely produced relatively few ideas. We suggest that the invention activities develop a highly valuable skill that operates at the initial stages of problem solving.