• Journal of Industrial Convergence
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.1-11
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• 2021

Prior research regarding the macro patterns of industry convergence has focused on the inter-industry patent network and cross-industry movements of products or services. This article provides a novel approach, according to which human resources embodying explicit and implicit knowledge and technologies are important media driving industry convergence. Drawing on GOMS data (2015-2019) and using information of university graduates' academic majors and their occupations, this article proposes an analytic strategy by which to understand the macro patterns and structural features of industry convergence. Specifically, we build unbalanced bipartite networks of major-industry (occupation) relations, and construct the measures of the industry's niche width and the measure of the average degree of convergence of majors that each industry is linked to. By crossing the two measures, we identify four groups of industries(occupations); specialist, generalist, partial convergence, and full convergence. The convergence group is composed of industries (occupations) that acquire human resources from a number of academic majors each of which plays a role of glue connecting several local industries.