Prediction of Emerging Technologies Based on Analysis of the U.S. Patent Citation Network

The network of patents connected by citations is an evolving graph, which provides a representation of the innovation process. A patent citing another implies that the cited patent reflects a piece of previously existing knowledge that the citing patent builds upon. A methodology presented here (i) identifies actual clusters of patents: i.e. technological branches, and (ii) gives predictions about the temporal changes of the structure of the clusters. A predictor, called the {citation vector}, is defined for characterizing technological development to show how a patent cited by other patents belongs to various industrial fields. The clustering technique adopted is able to detect the new emerging recombinations, and predicts emerging new technology clusters. The predictive ability of our new method is illustrated on the example of USPTO subcategory 11, Agriculture, Food, Textiles. A cluster of patents is determined based on citation data up to 1991, which shows significant overlap of the class 442 formed at the beginning of 1997. These new tools of predictive analytics could support policy decision making processes in science and technology, and help formulate recommendations for action

The Convergence of Manufacturing and Service Technologies: A Patent Analysis Approach

Active technological convergence of manufacturing industries and service industries has been emerged as a core and essential phenomenon for recent business environment. Technology convergence has already been the basic force behind the both product innovation and service innovation, changing the ways in which firms interact with their customers. Despite the gravity, there has been limited approach to investigate the technological convergence of manufacturing technologies and service technologies from the empirical perspective. In response, this paper aims to investigate technological convergence between manufacturing technology and service technology using patent analysis. For this purpose, we define the service technology and manufacturing technology. Following on this, we analyze the USPC classification of those technologies to analyze the technological convergence. To investigate the dynamic change of convergence, 10-year-dyanamics are observed. As case studies, three industries which show high level of technological convergence of manufacturing and service - banking, healthcare, and education industries are selected and analyzed in detail

Patent Analytics Based on Feature Vector Space Model: A Case of IoT

The number of approved patents worldwide increases rapidly each year, which requires new patent analytics to efficiently mine the valuable information attached to these patents. Vector space model (VSM) represents documents as high-dimensional vectors, where each dimension corresponds to a unique term. While originally proposed for information retrieval systems, VSM has also seen wide applications in patent analytics, and used as a fundamental tool to map patent documents to structured data. However, VSM method suffers from several limitations when applied to patent analysis tasks, such as loss of sentence-level semantics and curse-of-dimensionality problems. In order to address the above limitations, we propose a patent analytics based on feature vector space model (FVSM), where the FVSM is constructed by mapping patent documents to feature vectors extracted by convolutional neural networks (CNN). The applications of FVSM for three typical patent analysis tasks, i.e., patents similarity comparison, patent clustering, and patent map generation are discussed. A case study using patents related to Internet of Things (IoT) technology is illustrated to demonstrate the performance and effectiveness of FVSM. The proposed FVSM can be adopted by other patent analysis studies to replace VSM, based on which various big data learning tasks can be performed

Food-pharma convergence in medical nutrition

At present, industries within the health and life science sector are moving towards one another resulting in new industries such as the medical nutrition industry. Medical nutrition products are specific nutritional compositions for intervention in disease progression and symptom alleviation. Industry convergence, described as the blurring of boundaries between industries, plays a crucial role in the shaping of new markets and industries. Assuming that the medical nutrition industry has emerged from the convergence between the food and pharma industries, it is crucial to research how and which distinct industry domains have contributed to establish this relatively new industry. The first two stages of industry convergence (knowledge diffusion and consolidation) are measured by means of patent analysis. First, the extent of knowledge diffusion within the medical nutrition industry is graphed in a patent citation interrelations network. Subsequently the consolidation based on technological convergence

Linking science to technology: using bibliographic references in patents to build linkage schemes.

In this paper, we develop and discuss a method to design a linkage scheme that links the systems of science and technology through the use of patent citation data. After conceptually embedding the linkage scheme in the current literature on science-technology interactions and associations, the methodology and algorithms used to decelop the linkage scheme are discussed in detail. The method is subsequently tested on and applied to subsets of USPTO patents. The results point to highly skewed citation distributions, enabling us to discern between those fields of technology that are highly science-interactive and those fields where technology develoment is highly independent from the scientific literature base.Science; Patents; Systems; Data; Algorithms; Distribution;

Convergence in information and communication technology (ICT) using patent analysis

Since the 1990s, information and communication technology (ICT) has been perceived as the critical technology for economic development, and the ICT industry itself has been growing exceptionally fast. Moreover, technology convergence in ICT has received particular attention. ICT innovations diffuse into existing products and thus come to form a new integral part of the goods. This is an exploratory research to examine technology convergence of the supply side as a firm level in the ICT sector using International Patent Classification (IPC) of 43,636 sample patents from 1995 to 2008. This study finds a degree of merger and relationships between different technology domains through the association rule mining of patent co-classification. This type of analysis helps companies to take strategies under the environment of technological trajectory change

The emergence of new technologies in the ICT field: main actors, geographical distribution and knowledge sources

This paper examines the emergence of technologies, applications and platforms in the area of information and communication technologies (ITC), using patent data. It detects new technologies/applications/products using patents' abstracts and describes them looking at their degree of "hybridisation", in terms of technological domains and knowledge base, at the role of firms in driving the innovation activity, and at the geographical distribution of the innovation. The results show that in emerging technologies in ITC are more concentrated across technological classes and across firms than non emerging ones, and that this pattern is invariant across major countries. Furthermore, a preliminary analysis on patent citations show that in emerging technologies knowledge sources are more specific in terms of technological classes and more dispersed in terms of cited institutions. Also there is evidence of a role for universities and public research centres as sources of knowledge

Systematic literature review of convergence: A systems perspective and re-evaluation of the convergence process

This article examines convergence by providing a systematic literature review using scientometric method. Despite the steady growth of convergence literature, we still have an incomplete understanding of convergence concepts as well as the processes of industry convergence (IC). Our systematic review highlights several key findings. First, our review highlights six clusters of research on convergence. Second, our analysis suggests that the process of convergence does not necessarily progress in the three- to four-step supply-side process as postulated in the literature, i.e., from scientific convergence, technology convergence, market convergence, and finally to IC. Although existing literature suggests that IC occurs as a result of supply-side convergence, we expand on this proposition and put forth market-driven convergence processes. Third, we provide a typology of the convergence concepts to bring clarity and avoid indiscriminate use of the various convergence concepts. Finally, our article offers new debates on the literature of convergence, providing scholars with research directions that extend beyond the standard convergence processes. Our systematic review is relevant to scholars and managers as the study highlights a taxonomy of convergence scholarship, a typology of convergence concepts, and a re-evaluation of the IC process model to drive the research forward

SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS OF MANGOSTEEN TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT CLUSTER IN INDONESIA BASED ON PATENT DOCUMENT APPLICATION

Functional food consumption is on the rise and has a significant market value. Indonesia is one of the largest mangosteens (a functional food source commodity) exporting countries globally. Unfortunately, the mangosteen export is still in fresh fruit condition, not in other forms that have a higher value. Policymakers need to identify critical technologies in the development of mangosteen commodities. This study uses a patent-based technology document analysis method to map the potential of technology. The data used is patent data that has been registered with the Indonesian Patent Office and the WIPO Patentscope database. The analysis was carried out using computational methods, namely a Social Network Analysis with the Girvan-Newman algorithm. According to the study's findings based on global patent data, there are three major technology clusters used in mangosteen patents: 1) 24 percent for technology related to developing preparations for medical, dental, or toilet purposes (A61K). 2) 20% for food and food ingredient technology or non-alcoholic beverages (A23L). The remaining 43 percent is spread across many other IPC technology codes, including technology related to drug preparations (A61P). It is in line with the results of patent data analysis in Indonesia, which also shows that there are three dominant technology groups applied to mangosteen in Indonesia, namely 1) Technology related to the development of medical, dental, and toilet technology (A61K) of 47 percent; 2) Technology related to food and food ingredients or non-alcoholic drinks (A23L) by 18 percent, and 3) Technology related to drug preparations (A61P) by 13 percent and the remaining 22 percent spread over several other IPC technology codes. According to Social Network Analysis, the world's dominant technology cluster for mangosteen is technology related to the development of food and food ingredients or non-alcoholic beverages (A23L). The technology associated with medical, dental, and toilet technology is the most important mangosteen technology cluster in Indonesia (A61K)

Standards as a driving force that influences emerging technological trajectories in the converging world of the Internet and things: An investigation of the M2M/IoT patent network

While standards are said to create windows of opportunity in facilitation of technological convergence, it is not clear how they affect technological trajectories and strategic choices of firms in the face of convergence and in the process of catch-up. There is little research on the relationship between standards and technological trajectories, particularly in the age of convergence. This paper investigates how standards shape the emerging M2M/IoT technological trajectory and influence convergence in terms of technological importance and diversity. We, firstly, found that standards are a driving force of technological convergence. The second finding is that 3GPP standards assume a crucial role in setting the boundary conditions of the M2M/IoT technological systems. Third, we identified strategic groups and strategic patents that centered around the M2M/IoT trajectory. Forth, standards serve as an important factor in the process of creating a new path for catch-up firms (e.g. Huawei). These findings make contributions to innovation and standards studies by empirically examining the relationship between technological trajectories and standards. Furthermore, they clearly cast light on ongoing cooperation and competition along the M2M/IoT trajectory, and offer practical implications for catch-up strategies