Measuring technological complexity - Current approaches and a new measure of structural complexity

Abstract: The paper reviews two prominent approaches for the measurement of technological complexity: the method of reflection and the assessment of technologies' combinatorial difficulty. It discusses their central underlying assumptions and identifies potential problems related to these. A new measure of structural complexity is introduced as an alternative. The paper also puts forward four stylized facts of technological complexity that serve as benchmarks in an empirical evaluation of five complexity measures (increasing development over time, larger R&D efforts, more collaborative R&D, spatial concentration). The evaluation utilizes European patent data for the years 1980 to 2013 and finds the new measure of structural complexity to mirror the four stylized facts as good as or better than traditional measures.