Adoption intensity: a measure based on the number of capital units embodying a new technology within a country or output volume generated using innovative technology.
Adoption lag: number of years between the first invention of a technology anywhere in the world and its first recorded adoption within a particular country.
Agro-ecological condition: refers to a zone that has a combination of soil, landform and climactic conditions characteristic of a given region.
Blue hydrogen: hydrogen produced from natural gas with emissions trapped using carbon capture and storage (CCS). Sometimes called "low-carbon hydrogen" because CO₂ is created, but not released into the environment.
Breakthrough technologies: technologies that emerge through a novel combination of existing technical knowledge.
Deep tech innovations: includes transformative technologies like artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, advanced biotechnology, and clean energy solutions.
General purpose technology (GPT): a foundational technology that can be used across many different industries and activities, spurring widespread innovation and long-term gains in productivity and economic change. Rather than serving a single function, GPT enables numerous new applications and improvements throughout the economy. The steam engine and the internet are examples of a GPT.
Generative AI (GenAI): based on machine learning, generative AI tools are trained using enormous amounts of data, often including billions of pages of text or images. Training data sets may consist of freely available, unencumbered information (pure data), protected data (such as copyright protected works) or a mixture of both. The trained AI tool is then prompted by human input which triggers a complex series of often billions of calculations that determine the output. It is generally not possible to predict the output or determine whether and to what extent certain parts of the training data influence the output produced.
Green hydrogen: hydrogen created through electrolysis using clean electricity from renewable sources to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The process emits no carbon.
Grey hydrogen: hydrogen produced from natural gas using steam methane reformation without capturing the resultant greenhouse gas emissions.
Knowledge spillovers: spillovers occur when ideas, expertise, or skills spread from one economic actor to others without there being a deliberate transfer or payment. They may further adopt outside a formal technology transfer framework. Spillovers happen unintentionally as others benefit from knowledge flows the originator did not plan or control.
Patent thicket: a dense web of overlapping patent rights requiring innovators to secure multiple licenses in order to commercialize a new technology.
Reuse (of technological knowledge): the replication of an existing combination of technological components in subsequent inventions. Consistent with a evolutionary view of innovation, reuse captures the continuation of a technological trajectory through later patents that employ the same combination of patent classification codes first introduced by an initial invention.
Standard essential patent (SEP): a patent that protects an invention essential to the implementation of a particular technology standard. Such standards are critical for ensuring the safety, interoperability, and compatibility of different products and services made available by various companies.
Technology adoption: describes how individuals and organizations start using a new technology and integrate it into their activities.
Technology diffusion: refers to the broader spread of new technology across firms, industries or economies as more users adopt it over time.
Technology readiness level (TRL): technologies are classified using the (TRL) framework, originally developed by NASA in the 1970s and subsequently adapted by the International Energy Agency (IEA) for energy technologies. The classification employed in this analysis draws from the IEA Clean Energy Technology Guide.
Technology transfer: a particular form of adoption. It involves the deliberate sharing of knowledge, skills, methods or technologies between parties.
Technological trajectory: the path of incremental improvements and problem-solving activities that a technology follows over time, guided by a shared set of principles and technical solutions.
Total factor productivity (TFP): a measure of productivity across firms, industries and sectors. In agriculture, TFP is calculated as the ratio of output farmers produce with the amount of land, labor, machinery and other inputs used.