Using Trademarks to Measure Innovation in Knowledge-Intensive Business Services

Abstract

We present an empirical approach to measuring service innovation on the company level through the analysis of trademarks. Prior empirical investigations in several industries have shown that a trademark may be used as an innovation indicator. This article explores the use and relevance of trademarks by conducting a survey in the knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) industries with 278 participating companies. Our survey results explain the use of trademarks as a way to protect innovation and intellectual property for KIBS. In sum, we show that trademarks can be described as adequate and useful indicators to measure new service innovations in the KIBS industries. Additionally, we show that trademarks have the potential to overcome weaknesses of traditional measurement concepts towards KIBS innovation and might make special surveys redundant in the future.