Abstract: “Our research comes within the studies concerning innovation strategies. The aim of the paper is to define a set of innovation behaviors, by analyzing patent data. The work contributes to the current literature on innovation management by providing an integrated framework which detects four dimensions of innovation processes (core vs. non-core, exploitation vs. exploration, closed vs. open, incremental vs. radical) and describes how companies manage technological evolution and organize R AND D activities from a quantitative point of view. The methodology is tested on a sample of 98 R AND D intense companies from the bio-pharmaceutical industry, by analyzing 10,983 patents applied in 2012.”

Keywords: innovation strategies, exploitation vs. exploration, closed vs. open innovation, incremental vs. radical innovation, patent data analysis, bio-pharmaceutical industry.