مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد مباحث برجسته همگرایی فناوری – الزویر 2019

Technological Convergence (TC) reflects developmental processes that overlap different technological fields. It holds promise to yield outcomes that exceed the sum of its subparts. Measuring emergence for a TC environment can inform innovation management. This paper suggests a novel approach to identify Emergent Topics (ETopics) of the TC environment within a target technology domain using patent information. A non-TC environment is constructed as a comparison group. First, TC is operationalized as a co-classification of a given patent into multiple 4-digit IPC codes (≥2-IPC). We take a set of patents and parse those into three sub-datasets based on the number of IPC codes assigned 1-IPC (Non-TC), 2-IPC and ≥3-IPC. Second, a method is applied to identify emergent terms (ETs) and calculate emergence score for each term in each sub-dataset. Finally, we cluster those ETs using Principal Components Analysis (PCA) to generate a factor map with ETopics. A convergent domain – 3D printing – is selected to present the illustrative results. Results affirm that for 3D printing, emergent topics in TC patents are distinctly different from those in non-TC patents. The number of ETs in the TC environment is increasing annually.

Introduction

Actions such as sharing similar technological characteristics accelerate the erosion of distinct barriers among industries. Technologies commercialized in one industry could significantly influence, or even shape, the nature of a product and process evolution in other industries. This growing trend is broadly known as Technological Convergence (Lei, 2000). Regarding the converging environment, sourcing the essential technological knowledge from beyond their own industry is often necessary and key to successful innovation management. New and emerging technologies appear frequently in the converging environment, at the boundaries of different technology fields. Martin (1995) has emphasized the foresight of the most promising research areas and emerging technologies that can yield longer-term economic and social benefits. He also introduced the notion of “convergence of technological fields” as one characteristic of general emerging technologies. Emerging technologies have the potential to be highly generative and may open up whole new areas of technology and science (Breitzman and Thomas, 2015). In academia, the existing literature is oriented toward patent-based approaches for the identification of emerging technologies (Lee et al., 2017). Yet, there is a lack of exploration for emerging technologies in the convergence environment. We have asked the research question: Is there an analytical approach to help identify and distinguish emergent topics in the convergence environment?