Search

The diffusion of new technologies is crucial for the realization of social and economic returns to innovation. Tracking and mapping technology diffusion is, however, typically limited by the extent to which we can observe technology adoption. This study uses website texts to train a multilingual language model ensemble to map technology diffusion for the case of 3D printing. The study identifies relevant actors and their roles in the diffusion process. The results show that besides manufacturers, service provider, retailers, and information providers play an important role. The geographic distribution of adoption intensity suggests that regional 3D-printing intensity is driven by experienced lead users and the presence of technical universities. The overall adoption intensity varies by sector and firm size. These patterns indicate that the approach of using webAI provides a useful and novel tool for technology mapping which adds to existing measures based on patents or survey data.

Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) could play a pivotal role in the pursuit of climate objectives. SMEs have a significant carbon footprint on aggregate, but they can also contribute to reaching net zero through their innovations and commitment to the use of environmentally friendly practices. This study develops a novel metric to identify environmental engagement, also referred to as "greening". The study harnesses the power of machine-learning and analyses the content of over one million websites of firms from 15 OECD countries encompassing about 10 billion words. Greening is identified based on firms' self-declared information about products or processes on their websites. The resulting indicator is then evaluated considering firms' characteristics. The results show that: (1) About one-third of SMEs are environmentally engaged, albeit with considerable variations across countries; (2) Greening SMEs are more productive, pay higher wages and their sales grow faster than nongreening SMEs; (3) Solar energy is the most cited action among greening SMEs, followed by recycling and energy efficiency, (4) Sectors with higher greenhouse gas emission reduction over the past decade also display higher levels of environmental engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]