OrgTech: Evidence of organizational innovations in patent data

Abstract

Organization theorists have long claimed that organizational innovations are nontechnological, in part, because they are unpatentable. We show that the rise of organizational software (OrgSoft) opens opportunities for embodying organizational knowledge in digital tools and thus turns organizational innovations (OrgInn) into technological ones (TechInn) that are patentable. Applying machine learning algorithms to US patent data, we identify 205,434 US patent applications for OrgSoft submitted between 1971 and 2020. Among them, 141,285 applications or 68.8 % represent OrgInn. Our analysis shows how these innovations contribute to OrgSoft's patenting and thus recognition as TechInn. Specifically, organizational innovations enhance novelty and nonobviousness of the invention but raise concerns about the inventor's ability to embody these ideas in practical tools transferable across organizational contexts. We conclude that the present-day digital transformation turns the general debate about organizational innovations being technologies into the specific challenge of designing practical tools that embody novel ideas about organizing and make them applicable across a variety of contexts.