Context–Problem Network and Quantitative Method of Patent Analysis: A Case Study of Wireless Energy Transmission Technology

Jason Jihoon Ree, Cheolhyun Jeong, Hyunseok Park and Kwangsoo Kim
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Jason Jihoon Ree: Department of Industrial and Management Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Pohang 37673, Korea
Cheolhyun Jeong: Department of Industrial and Management Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Pohang 37673, Korea
Hyunseok Park: Department of Information System, Hanyang University, Seoul 04763, Korea
Kwangsoo Kim: Department of Industrial and Management Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Pohang 37673, Korea

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 5, 1-18

Abstract: Identification of prevalent problems is an important process of strategic innovation for stakeholders of trending technologies. This paper proposes a systematic and replicable method of patent analysis to identify problems to be solved requisite for sustainable technology planning and development, by implementing the concept of ‘context’ to facilitate problem identification. The main concept of the method entails the importance of the connections between contextual information and problems to provide more focused, relevant, and constructive insights essential for instating goals for research and development activities. These context–problem entities and their entwined connections are discovered using keyword pattern matching, grammar-based text mining, and co-word analysis techniques. The intermediary outputs are then utilized to generate the proposed context–problem network (CP net) for social network, grammar, and quantitative data analysis. For verification, our method was applied to 737 patents in the wireless energy transmission technology domain, successfully yielding CP net data. The detailed analysis of the resulting CP net data delivered meaningful information in the wireless charging technology field: The main contexts, “batteries”, “power transmission coils”, and “cores”, are found to be most relevant to the main problems, “maximizing coupling efficiency”, “minimizing DC signal components”, and “charging batteries”. The results provide a wide range of informative perspectives for individuals, the scientific community, corporate, and market-level stakeholders. Furthermore, the method of this study can be applicable to various technologies since it is independent of specific subject domains. Future research directions aim to improve this method for better quality and modeling of contexts and problems.

Keywords: systematic and replicable patent analysis method; problem-solved concept; context–problem network; network data analysis; sustainable wireless energy transmission technology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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