| Type | Journal article (empirical study) |
| Title | “The Geography of Patenting in India: Patterns and Determinants” |
| Author | Jaya Prakash Pradhan |
| Published | 2014 · Metamorphosis: A Journal of Management Research, 13(2), pp. 29–43 · IIM Lucknow (SAGE) |
| Data | India’s domestic patent applications by state and region · 1990–2010 |
| Read | DOI · PDF |
This is a plain-language summary of “The Geography of Patenting in India: Patterns and Determinants” (Metamorphosis, 2014).
In short:
- India’s innovation is geographically lopsided: three regions — West, South, and North — account for about 91% of all patent applications, and two states (Delhi and Maharashtra) produce over half.
- Patenting concentrates where four things come together: large markets, skilled people, knowledge institutions, and dense urban centres.
- Success compounds — a region’s existing innovation base attracts still more — so the leading states tend to pull further ahead.
The big question: where does innovation happen?
We tend to talk about India’s innovation in the singular — “India is innovating.” But innovation has an address, and this study maps it using domestic patent applications over 1990–2010. The picture is strikingly uneven.
Three regions dominate — the West (38%), South (29%), and North (24%) together produce roughly nine in ten of all patent applications. And the concentration is even sharper at the state level: just two states, Delhi and Maharashtra, account for more than half of all of India’s patent applications. For a country of more than two dozen states, that is two innovation capitals doing the heavy lifting for everyone else.
Why some places and not others
What separates a patent hotspot from the rest? The study tests a range of regional factors and finds four that consistently matter.
Patenting rises where there are large local markets (more customers, more reason to innovate), a skilled workforce built on higher education, knowledge institutions — universities, research bodies, technical colleges — close at hand, and the density of urban centres, where skilled people, ideas, and industry-academia links concentrate. Cities, in other words, do much of the work: they supply the critical mass that innovation needs.
There is also a self-reinforcing dynamic. A region that already patents heavily has the knowledge base, networks, and reputation that attract still more innovative activity — which is part of why the gap between the leading states and the rest has been so persistent.
What it would take to spread innovation
The findings point to a clear, if demanding, conclusion: you can’t manufacture an innovation hotspot by funding R&D alone. It takes a whole ecosystem. The levers that follow from the analysis are:
| Lever | What it means |
|---|---|
| Market access | Help local firms reach national markets and ease the business environment |
| Talent pipeline | Raise higher-education enrolment and quality; cut dropout rates |
| Knowledge infrastructure | Invest in research institutions and university–industry links |
| Urban development | Build up tier-II cities and their infrastructure as new innovation nodes |
| Industrial strategy | Promote technology-intensive sectors and clusters |
The harder lesson is that these have to move together. A region with universities but no markets, or cities but no skilled workforce, won’t close the gap — the pieces only add up when they reinforce one another.
Read the academic abstract
Regional analysis of knowledge-creation activities in emerging economies like India remains inadequate. This paper discusses the ways in which sub-national and regional factors can affect patenting activities and examines their empirical role in the case of India. The regional profile of domestic patenting activity in India is observed to be considerably concentrated over space. West India, North India, and South India turn out to be the three most dynamic and dominating sub-national spaces in Indian domestic patenting throughout the period 1990–2010. At the state level, more than half of all patent applications originated from just two states, namely Delhi and Maharashtra. The empirical analysis further underscores that Indian states’ patenting activities are largely shaped by the size of local markets, the availability of a skilled labour force, knowledge institutions, and urban centres.Cite this article
Pradhan, J. P. (2014). The geography of patenting in India: Patterns and determinants. Metamorphosis: A Journal of Management Research, 13(2), 29–43. https://doi.org/10.1177/0972622520140206
DOI → · Read the paper (PDF) →
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