SDI Innovation Outlook analyzes millions of patents to quantify the alignment of companies’ patent portfolios with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The Sustainable Development Investments Asset Owner Platform (SDI AOP) and Qontigo, its exclusive distribution partner, have announced the launch of the SDI Innovation Outlook. The new dataset provides forward looking information, by analyzing the alignment of companies’ patent portfolios with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
The SDI Innovation Outlook is a combination of scores on 130 technology themes which have been identified through the SDI AOP taxonomy in a transparent and quality-assured mapping process by AI partner Entis. Currently, the dataset provides reports with detailed company profiles for over 2,200 firms.
“We evaluate millions of patents across the globe by using large-scale network analysis and proprietary statistical models. The analysis incorporates the quality and importance of individual patents, takes historical trends into account and provides granular insights for specific themes and technologies,” explained James Leaton, Research Director, SDI AOP.
“The growing community of investors using SDI data benefits from the consistent, objective way we have identified SDG goals and technologies across revenues and now patents. The deployment of artificial intelligence to implement our SDG framework is essential to process the huge volumes of data,” added Leaton.
The SDI Innovation Outlook is a new forward-looking SDI dataset, building on the SDI Classification dataset which assesses companies’ current product and service-related contributions to the SDGs based predominantly on revenues.
“The SDI Outlook enables users to identify potential for future value creation and test whether R&D activities match corporate commitments. This can feed into engagement strategies, peer comparison and portfolio construction,” said Leaton.
Alongside the release of the SDI Innovation Outlook, the SDI Classification dataset which focuses on a companies’ product and service-related contributions to the SDGs, moved from a semi-annual to quarterly release cycle. The SDI Classification universe was also further extended to include high yield bond issuers, in response to user demand. In August 2022, negative SDG contribution information was introduced to the dataset to identify revenues generated by products and services that are defined as inconsistent with achieving the UN SDGs.
The SDI AOP was launched in 2020 to work with investors to embed the UN SDGs into their investment processes and integrate SDG contributions into their portfolio management and reporting, enabling target setting and progress monitoring.
