Effects of international co-inventor networks on green inventions in Brazil, India and South Africa.

This paper presents international co-inventor networks as both a predictor variable of countries' ability to produce and disseminate internationally green inventions, and an alternative mechanism to support development of relevant programmes and policies in that regard. It includes cases from three developing countries with limited resources for clean technology development, Brazil, India and South Africa, which have shown successes owing to the potentials of co-inventor networks. It contributes the extent literature on this topic, which predominantly emphasizes firms' responses to conventional governments' interventions (subsidies, market price, standards, and interagency cooperation) to achieve cleaner production plans and particularly the Targets 17.6; 17.7 and 17.8 of the sustainable development goals. Broadly, such targets aim at enhancing countries' technological capabilities through partnership. The paper finds various correlations between co-inventor networks and growth of patents in solar energy, air pollution management and biofuels in the sample countries. Correlations are linear in India, followed by Brazil owing to the larger sizes of co-inventor networks but nonlinear in South Africa, which has smaller networks. The paper argues that co-inventor networks accelerate transnational exchanges of core human capital, and are fitting predictors of production and flows of green inventions. They are worth adopting in national and transnational industrial and innovation cluster policies globally to support sustainable production plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]