Modeling Knowledge Flow in Catch-up of Countries In the field of Solar Technologies Using Patent Metadata

Technological catch-up has become an important topic in studies of technology development in recent years. The common point of all research is that catch-up is directly related to knowledge and its flow and building capacity and accumulation of technological capabilities of countries.It is noteworthy that in most studies, there is a dual foreign-indigenous knowledge, and studies that have examined the simultaneous and complementary role of these two types of knowledge in catch-up are limited. In this study, the role of knowledge flow in the field of solar technologies due to its strategic importance of it and also the linear mode of innovation in it was investigated. This research was conducted using the method of citation analysis and on the metadata of the Derwent database (1980-2017).The results showed that successful countries were initially able to increase absorption capacity by using foreign knowledge. They then relied more on their indigenous knowledge and eventually, in addition to providing knowledge for themselves, became a source of technological knowledge for other countries. In addition to acquiring foreign knowledge, successful countries were also able to develop it and create knowledge that is used by other countries, and thus find the main mediating role of knowledge diffusion.