JultikaUniversity of Oulu repository

The construction industry is generally considered a non-innovative and conservative industrial sector compared to other industries. Measurement of innovation is a very difficult task and it has very complex product system. This study aims to describe the role of innovation and development activities within the Finnish construction industries. Additionally, it explores the logic of innovation in construction and patent creation in the Finnish construction industry by sectors. It evaluates the correlation of patent creation and Research and Development (R&D) investment. The research also covers the citation of Finnish construction patents. A major conclusion was drawn from the empirical data analysis followed by the qualitative analysis approach. However, both qualitative and quantitative techniques have been used for the data analysis. Whole thesis was completed by two-fold process: 1) analysis of construction patent data from 2004–2014 and 2) semi structured interview with the expert of the construction companies. The result of the research focuses on several aspects of the innovation and development activities. However, the main result demonstrates that the Finnish construction industry have understanding of innovation and development activities as a second factor after price in the bidding process. They are more interested in the innovation activities. Similarly, it also reveals that mainly, patents are created in the construction ‘Product sector’ followed by ‘Building’, ‘HPAC’ and ‘Infra’. The result also reveals that organizational innovation and market innovation have taken place more than product innovation and process innovation. Finally, result shows that the R&D investment and patent creation do have a positive correlation; and R&D budget investment per patent varies from company to company. The major limitation of this study is in finding the correlation of R&D investment and patent creation because of the currency conversion rate. The currency conversion rate on the day of analysis is used for this research which might fluctuate. Also, some of the companies do not indicate their exact R&D budget in their public file. So based on the available information R&D budget is calculated and overall picture has been presented in the research.