Analyzing high-leverage corporate innovation using the data surface mining technique

Corporate innovation continues to be the subject of heightened interest in the business press and the increasing focus of international conferences. In addition, there has been increased attention paid to technology management in the services sector, as evidenced by a recent series of international technical conferences. In this paper, two recently published studies on innovation are analyzed to ascertain the relative involvement of services and goods companies; this analysis relied on a technique labelled data surface mining (DSM). The current findings reinforce the previously reported observation that innovation appears to be the purview of the goods sector. The issues of technology management especially relevant to the services sector are presented. These issues are of critical importance in light of the fact that the services sector represents 80% (GDP and/or employment) of the United States economy and is of increasing importance in the global economy.