Innovation Efficiency Evaluation Based on a Two-Stage DEA Model With Shared-Input: A Case of Patent-Intensive Industry in China

The patent-intensive industries play a leading and exemplary role in innovation driven, it is crucial to research evaluation methods to draw their levels and difference of innovation efficiency. This article proposes a new definition method for the patent-intensive industry with the ratio of inventions in force and research and development (R&D) personnel's full-time equivalent, divides the innovation process into technology R&D stage and scientific & technological (S&T) achievement transformation stage. The basic work includes three aspects: selecting the two-stage data envelopment analysis model with shared-inputs as evaluation method by comparison with others; constructing evaluation index system by comprehensive analysis of previous researches and objective judgment; extracting evaluation data. It evaluates the innovation efficiency of patent-intensive industries, demonstrates the corresponding characteristics: 1) the overall level of innovation efficiency is not high; 2) the R&D capability is stronger than the transformation capability of S&T achievement; and 3) the industry with better overall innovation efficiency has better transformation capability. It also provides the targeted industrial policy suggestions by dividing the patent-intensive industries into four categories. The research result shows that the proposed method is suitable for the innovation efficiency evaluation for the patent-intensive industries, and its research framework could be applied to the evaluation of other industries.