Technology Planning through Technology Roadmap: Application of Patent Citation Network

Technology roadmap is a powerful tool that considers relationships of technology, product and market and referred as a supporting technology strategy and planning. There are numerous studies that have attempted to develop technology roadmap and case studies on specific technology areas. However, a number of studies have been dependant on brainstorming and discussion of expert group, delphi technique as qualitative analysis rather than systemic and quantitative analysis. To overcome the limitation, patent analysis considered as quite quantitative analysis is employed in this paper. Therefore, this paper proposes new technology roadmapping based on patent citation network considering technology life cycle and suggests planning for undeveloped technology but considered as promising. At first, patent data and citation information are collected and patent citation network is developed on the basis of collected patent information. Secondly, we investigate a stage of technology in the life cycle by considering patent application year and the technology life cycle, and duration of technology development is estimated. In addition, subsequent technologies are grouped as nodes of a super-level technology to show the evolution of the technology for the period. Finally, a technology roadmap is drawn by linking these technology nodes in a technology layer and estimating the duration of development time. Based on technology roadmap, technology planning is conducted to identify undeveloped technology through text mining and this paper suggests characteristics of technology that needs to be developed in the future. In order to illustrate the process of the proposed approach, technology for hydrogen storage is selected in this paper.