• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.185-192
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• 2019

Polymer materials are used in a wide variety of fields such as automobiles, aerospace, energy, IT, and as well as simple household products. Despite high interest in the technological convergence of polymer materials for the sustaining progress, there have been only limited analyzes on the topic. This research attempted to analyze the types of convergence and the level of technology in the polymer materials field. For this purpose, we collected patent information from the PCT database and implemented a co-classification analysis. The research shows that Japan and Korea have more section-level convergence whilst US and Europe focus on field-level convergence. In terms of the quality measured by patent activity, patent competitiveness, and patent effect, Korean convergence technologies seem to be inferior to those of other countries.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.439-449
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• 2012

In recent innovation trends, one notable feature is the merging and overlapping of technologies: in other words, technological convergence. A key technological convergence is the fusion of biotechnology (BT) and information technology (IT). Major IT advances have led to innovative devices that allow us to advance BT. However, the lack of data on IT-BT convergence is a major impediment: relatively little research has analyzed the inter-disciplinary relationship of different industries. We propose a systematic approach to analyzing the technological convergence of BT and IT. Patent analysis, including citation and co-classification analyses, was adopted as a main method to measure the convergence intensity and coverage, and two portfolio matrices were developed to manage the technological convergence. The contribution of this paper is that it provides practical evidences for IT-BT convergence, based on quantitative data and systematic processes. This has managerial implications for each sector of IT and BT.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.6 no.5
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• pp.219-225
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• 2015

Nowadays, technologies are changing through industrial fusion and government & corporates need to predict the flow & direction of technologies. These flow & direction can be grasped through the analysis of patent information. The patent information uses the common classification codes in the world, and it is possible for the quantitative analysis based on objective data with the time information of technical area. The methods of patent analysis analyzed the technology fusion by using citation analysis & simultaneous classification analysis. This research analyzed patent information which used as an index to measure the technical innovation in the society based on knowledge, and would like to analyze technical trends and to describe the way of improvement in the future based on the aviation industry which is the representative fusion/complex industry.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Industry Convergence
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.471-481
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• 2023

Digital twin is considered as a key technology of industry 4.0, thus being essential for the future of industrial production. Despite the significance, a systematic analysis of its technological landscape is lacking. This study aims to investigate the technological development trends and newly emerging technological convergence opportunities in the domain of digital twin by exploiting patent information derived from U SPTO. For this purpose, this study visualized and predicted the convergence dynamics among patent classification codes by adopting patent co-classification analysis and link prediction approach. The findings show that the number of digital twin-related patent applications has increased significantly since 2018. The CPC code G06F showed the highest eigenvector centrality, while G05B was characterized by highest betweenness centrality. According to the predictive model, 41 novel links were revealed, acting as potential technology convergence opportunities. These links were then categorized into 11 different domains. The most dominant category was "digital data processing and artificial intelligence", which could play a foundational role in the diffusion of digital twin technology. The presence of digital twin technology is dominant in manufacturing, but its applications are expected to expand, including "climate change", "healthcare" and "aerospace engineering". The derived insights can support R&D managers and policy makers in formulating R&D strategies and directing future R&D investment decisions.

• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
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• v.49 no.1
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• pp.97-112
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• 2021

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the technology convergence and its characteristics, focusing on the defense technologies in South Korea. Methods: Patents applied by the Agency for Defense Development (ADD) during 1979~2019 were utilized in this paper. Information Entropy analysis has been conducted on the patents to analyze the usability and potential for development. To analyze the trend of technology convergence in defense technologies, Social Network Analysis(SNA) and Association Rule Mining Analysis were applied to the co-occurrence networks of International Patent Classification (IPC) codes. Results: The results show that sensor, communication, and aviation technologies played a key role in recent development of defense science and technology. The co-occurrence network analysis also showed that the convergence has gradually enhanced over time, and the convergence between different technology sectors largely emerged, showing that the convergence has been diversified. Conclusion: By analyzing the patents of the defense technologies during the last 30 years, this study presents the comprehensive perspectives on trends and characteristics of technology convergence in defense industry. The results of this study are expected to be used as a guideline for decision making in the government's R&D policies in defence industry.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.42 no.5
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• pp.337-351
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• 2016

As technologies' life-cycle shortens and their development directions are uncertain, firms' technology planning capability becomes increasingly important. Prior patent-based studies using technology growth curves identify developmental stages of technologies, thereby formulating technology development directions from an overall perspective. However, a technology generally consists of multiple sub-technologies and accordingly their development stages are likely various. In this regard, the prior studies failed to identify core sub-technologies and their specific development directions. Therefore, we suggest an approach consisting of 1) identifying core sub-technologies of a given technology using patent co-classifications and social network analysis, and 2) identifying each sub-technology's development stage and thereby determining its further development direction. We apply our approach to patents related to augmented reality to examine its applicability. It is expected that our approach will help identify evolving development stages for the core sub-technologies of a given technology, thereby effectively assisting technology experts in technology planning processes.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.10 no.11
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• pp.85-93
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• 2019

Despite its matchless position in the global semiconductor industry, Korea has not distinguished itself in the semiconductor equipment sector. Semiconductor cleaning equipment is one of the semiconductor fabrication equipment, and it is expected to be more important along with the advancement of semiconductor fabrication processes. This study attempts to analyze technology competitiveness of major countries in the sector including Korea, and explore specialty sub-areas of the countries. For this purpose, we collected patents of semiconductor cleaning equipment during the last 10 years from the US patent database, and implemented quantitative patent analysis and co-classification network analysis. The result shows that, the US and Japan have been leading the technological progress in this sector, and Korea's competitiveness has lagged behind not only the leading countries but also its competitors and even latecomers. Therefore, intensive R&D and developing technological capabilities are needed for advancing the country's competitiveness in the sector.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Library and Information Science
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• v.46 no.4
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• pp.99-117
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• 2012

This paper proposes a method of using national R&D patents' CoIPC networks to identify interdisciplinary trends of technology areas related to Korean national R&D. While previous research analyzed interdisciplinarity of national R&D with simple bibliometric descriptions, this research uses the network-based indexes to analyze its interdisciplinarity from the viewpoints of interdisciplinary "diversity of coupling" and "strength of coupling". In this research, this proposed method was used to form a R&D CoIPC network from the Korean national R&D patents registered from 2007 to 2010. It is expected that the proposed method can be incorporated into a system for a national R&D trend analysis, and used to identify the issues of technology convergence in national R&D and formulate its related research policies.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.9-21
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• 2021

The study aims to identify convergence and trends in technology-based patent data for the biohealth sector in IP5 countries (KR, EP, JP, US, CN) and present the direction of development in that industry. We used patent co-classification analysis-based network analysis and TF-IDF-based text mining as the principal methodology to understand the current state of technology convergence. As a result, the technology convergence cluster in the biohealth industry was derived in three forms: (A) Medical device for treatment, (B) Medical data processing, and (C) Medical device for biometrics. Besides, as a result of trend analysis based on technology convergence results, it is analyzed that Korea is likely to dominate the market with patents with high commercial value in the future as it is derived as a market leader in (B) medical data processing. In particular, the field is expected to require technology convergence activation policies and R&D support strategies for the technology as the possibility of medical data utilization by domestic bio-health companies expands, along with the policy conversion of the "Data 3 Act" passed by the National Assembly in January 2019.

• Journal of Information Management
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.93-107
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• 2006

There are some questions about the way to monitoring the regional innovative activities in a specific field because of decision-making for raising regional specialized industry. Numerous studies have been conducted in the past using patent statistics to explain and compare the innovative capabilities of districts, regions and countries. The prior method of calculating the regional distribution of patent counts is to assign the patents to districts by assignee's address, which was not proper, in the case of larger firms's headquarters, holdings or subsidiaries, to mislead in geographical terms. So the regional distribution of patent was counted for a specific technology area, electric device field(H01 IPC classification), by inventors' residential addresses. Then the interregional structure was investigated by analysing the relations of co-inventors' regions by individual patent using a network analysis tool.