Significance We describe the strength and importance of the innovation network that links patenting technology fields together. We quantify that technological advances spill out of individual fields and enrich the work of neighboring technologies, but these spillovers are also localized and not universal. Thus, innovation advances in one part of the network can significantly impact nearby disciplines but rarely those very far away. We verify the strength and stable importance of the innovation network by showing how past innovations can predict future innovations in other fields over 10-y horizons. This better understanding of how scientific progress occurs and how inventions build upon themselves is an important input to our depictions of the cumulative process of innovation and its economic growth consequences.