Corporate activities in speech recognition and natural language: another 'new-science' based technology.

We have used data on patents and publications, and from an Internet-based survey, to analyse corporate technological activities in Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) technologies. Two distinct clusters of firms exist: large firms mainly in telecommunications, desktop computing, and consumer electronics; and small firms specialising in speech technologies. The small specialised firms depend heavily on nearby universities and public research institutes, and to some extent on nearby large firms; their relations with the large firms are complementary as well as competitive. Similar patterns can be observed in other, recently emerging, “new-science” – based technologies. Integration between ASR and NLP has so far been weak with the two research communities functioning more or less independently, with the former progressing more rapidly than the latter. Having built technological capabilities in ASR and NLP with a small proportion of their corporate technological resources, the large firms have two options depending on the rate of progress in these technologies (especially NLP) in the future. If it is high, substantial investments (including those in complementary technologies) could open up massive market opportunities. If it is low, modest investments will allow the exploitation of niche markets.