Dimensions of innovation during the high growth stage of materials and energy production

Life-cycles studies provide a comprehensive insight into innovation behavior and innovation constants. The study has led to making the connections between Green energy and Green materials. The authors have noted in the past that production and patent activities may be correlated to such an extent that they may be superimposed to a large degree, for all growth stages, simply by an origin-shift (OR) in the life cycle. The relative drive-force (defined as the ratio of the production and patent growth constants, DF) is noted to scale with the origin-shift. The value of this drive-force determines the amount of production of materials or energy that is influenced by patents. The slope of drive- force against the origin-shift ratio curve is noted to be a constant across all materials and energy categories. We find that even early stage production displays an origin-shift. The life-cycle approach collapses the energy categories/sources into two groups. Group 1, containing coal, natural gas, wind, renewable, fossil fuel, solar and total energy, is composed of energy categories/sources whose patent activity could be inferred as driving their production. On the other hand energy production from biomass, biofuel, geothermal and nuclear energy are identified in Group 2, in which patent activity is driven by the production activity. Retaining Stage III behavior occurs when the (OR) is slightly less than one and the (DF) less than one as this leads to a situation where with time, a higher innovation enhanced growth stage is possible. A very low (OR) and a low (DF) on the other hand lead to a transition from high-growth Stage III to a no-growth Stage IV with time. We discuss our findings in the Schumpeterian framework of constructive and destructive innovation and the Sekhar model of innovation-enhanced production. Green Materials are identified as those aligned with Green Energy. This article also focuses on disruptive and radical innovation during the Stage III life thus making connections with radical innovation concepts introduced by Dismukes.