An Intelligent Decision Support System for Selecting Promising Technologies for R&D based on Time-series Patent Analysis

As the pace of competition dramatically accelerates and the complexity of change grows, a variety of research have been conducted to improve firms' short-term performance and to enhance firms' long-term survival. In particular, researchers and practitioners have paid their attention to identify promising technologies that lead competitive advantage to a firm. Discovery of promising technology depends on how a firm evaluates the value of technologies, thus many evaluating methods have been proposed. Experts' opinion based approaches have been widely accepted to predict the value of technologies. Whereas this approach provides in-depth analysis and ensures validity of analysis results, it is usually cost-and time-ineffective and is limited to qualitative evaluation. Considerable studies attempt to forecast the value of technology by using patent information to overcome the limitation of experts' opinion based approach. Patent based technology evaluation has served as a valuable assessment approach of the technological forecasting because it contains a full and practical description of technology with uniform structure. Furthermore, it provides information that is not divulged in any other sources. Although patent information based approach has contributed to our understanding of prediction of promising technologies, it has some limitations because prediction has been made based on the past patent information, and the interpretations of patent analyses are not consistent. In order to fill this gap, this study proposes a technology forecasting methodology by integrating patent information approach and artificial intelligence method. The methodology consists of three modules : evaluation of technologies promising, implementation of technologies value prediction model, and recommendation of promising technologies. In the first module, technologies promising is evaluated from three different and complementary dimensions; impact, fusion, and diffusion perspectives. The impact of technologies refers to their influence on future technologies development and improvement, and is also clearly associated with their monetary value. The fusion of technologies denotes the extent to which a technology fuses different technologies, and represents the breadth of search underlying the technology. The fusion of technologies can be calculated based on technology or patent, thus this study measures two types of fusion index; fusion index per technology and fusion index per patent. Finally, the diffusion of technologies denotes their degree of applicability across scientific and technological fields. In the same vein, diffusion index per technology and diffusion index per patent are considered respectively. In the second module, technologies value prediction model is implemented using artificial intelligence method. This studies use the values of five indexes (i.e., impact index, fusion index per technology, fusion index per patent, diffusion index per technology and diffusion index per patent) at different time (e.g., t-n, t-n-1, t-n-2, ${\cdots}$) as input variables. The out variables are values of five indexes at time t, which is used for learning. The learning method adopted in this study is backpropagation algorithm. In the third module, this study recommends final promising technologies based on analytic hierarchy process. AHP provides relative importance of each index, leading to final promising index for technology. Applicability of the proposed methodology is tested by using U.S. patents in international patent class G06F (i.e., electronic digital data processing) from 2000 to 2008. The results show that mean absolute error value for prediction produced by the proposed methodology is lower than the value produced by multiple regression analysis in cases of fusion indexes. However, mean absolute error value of the proposed methodology is slightly higher than the value of multiple regression analysis. These unexpected results may be explained, in part, by small number of patents. Since this study only uses patent data in class G06F, number of sample patent data is relatively small, leading to incomplete learning to satisfy complex artificial intelligence structure. In addition, fusion index per technology and impact index are found to be important criteria to predict promising technology. This study attempts to extend the existing knowledge by proposing a new methodology for prediction technology value by integrating patent information analysis and artificial intelligence network. It helps managers who want to technology develop planning and policy maker who want to implement technology policy by providing quantitative prediction methodology. In addition, this study could help other researchers by proving a deeper understanding of the complex technological forecasting field.

R&D 기술 선정을 위한 시계열 특허 분석 기반 지능형 의사결정지원시스템

기술의 발전과 융합이 빠르게 이루어지고 있는 오늘날 유망기술을 어떻게 파악하여, 다양한 후보군들 중에서 최적의 R&D 대상을 어떻게 선정할 것인가에 대한 문제는 주요한 경영의사결정문제 중 하나로 부상하고 있다. 본 연구에서는 이러한 R&D 기술 선정 의사결정을 지원할 수 있는 새로운 지능형 의사결정지원시스템을 제안한다. 본 연구의 의사결정지원시스템은 크게 3가지 모듈로 구성되는데, 우선 첫 번째 모듈인 '기술가치 평가' 모듈에서는 기업이 관심을 갖고 있는 분야의 특허들을 분석하여 유망기술 파악에 요구되는 다양한 차원의 기술가치 평가지수 값들을 산출하는 작업이 이루어진다. 이를 통해, 현재 시점에서의 각 기술의 가치가 다양한 차원에서 평가가 이루어지고 나면, 두 번째 모듈인 '미래기술가치 예측' 모듈에서 이들의 시간 흐름에 따른 변화를 학습한 인공지능 모형을 토대로 각 후보기술들이 미래 시점에 어떤 가치지수값을 갖게 될 것인지 예측값을 산출하게 된다. 마지막 세 번째 모듈인 '최적 R&D 대상기술 선정 지원' 모듈에서는 앞서 두 번째 모듈에서 산출된 각 차원별 예상 가치지수값들을 적절히 가중합하여 기술의 종합적인 미래가치 예측값을 산출하여 의사결정자에게 제공하는 기능을 수행한다. 이를 통해 의사결정자가 자사에 적합한 최적의 R&D 대상기술을 선정할 수 있도록 하였다. 본 연구에서는 제안된 시스템의 적용 가능성을 검증하기 위해, 10년치 특허데이터에 인공신경망 기법을 적용하여 실제 기술가치 예측모형을 구축해 보고, 그 효과를 살펴본다.