Entropy and Gravity Concepts as New Methodological Indexes to Investigate Technological Convergence: Patent Network-Based Approach

The volatility and uncertainty in the process of technological developments are growing faster than ever due to rapid technological innovations. Such phenomena result in integration among disparate technology fields. At this point, it is a critical research issue to understand the different roles and the propensity of each element technology for technological convergence. In particular, the network-based approach provides a holistic view in terms of technological linkage structures. Furthermore, the development of new indicators based on network visualization can reveal the dynamic patterns among disparate technologies in the process of technological convergence and provide insights for future technological developments. This research attempts to analyze and discover the patterns of the international patent classification codes of the United States Patent and Trademark Office's patent data in printed electronics, which is a representative technology in the technological convergence process. To this end, we apply the physical idea as a new methodological approach to interpret technological convergence. More specifically, the concepts of entropy and gravity are applied to measure the activities among patent citations and the binding forces among heterogeneous technologies during technological convergence. By applying the entropy and gravity indexes, we could distinguish the characteristic role of each technology in printed electronics. At the technological convergence stage, each technology exhibits idiosyncratic dynamics which tend to decrease technological differences and heterogeneity. Furthermore, through nonlinear regression analysis, we have found the decreasing patterns of disparity over a given total period in the evolution of technological convergence. This research has discovered the specific role of each element technology field and has consequently identified the co-evolutionary patterns of technological convergence. These new findings on the evolutionary patterns of technological convergence provide some implications for engineering and technology foresight research, as well as for corporate strategy and technology policy.

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PID https://www.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0098009
PID pmc:PMC4051643
PID pmid:24914959
URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0098009
URL https://paperity.org/p/60457572/entropy-and-gravity-concepts-as-new-methodological-indexes-to-investigate-technological
URL https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4051643/
URL http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC4051643
URL https://academic.microsoft.com/#/detail/1974148689
URL https://doaj.org/toc/1932-6203
URL http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0098009
URL https://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0098009
URL http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC4051643?pdf=render
URL http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0098009
URL https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0098009&type=printable
URL http://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2014PLoSO...998009C/abstract
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Author Yongrae Cho
Author Minsung Kim
Contributor Glanzel, Wolfgang
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Collected From PubMed Central; Datacite; UnpayWall; DOAJ-Articles; Crossref; Microsoft Academic Graph
Hosted By Europe PubMed Central; PLoS ONE
Publication Date 2014-06-10
Publisher Public Library of Science (PLoS)
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Language UNKNOWN
Resource Type Other literature type; Article
keyword Q
keyword R
keyword keywords.General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
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Source https://science-innovation-policy.openaire.eu/search/publication?articleId=dedup_wf_001::becdda99770643c5ac1071921ace983b
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Last Updated 26 December 2020, 03:57 (CET)
Created 26 December 2020, 03:57 (CET)