A patent analysis method for identifying core technologies: Data mining and multi-criteria decision making approach
This study suggests new approach to identify core technologies through patent analysis. Specially, the approach applied data mining technique and multi-criteria decision making method to the co-classification information of registered patents. First, technological interrelationship matrices of intensity, relatedness, and cross-impact perspectives are constructed with support, lift and confidence values calculated by conducting an association rule mining on the co-classification information of patent data. Second, the analytic network process is applied to the constructed technological interrelationship matrices in order to produce the importance values of technologies from each perspective. Finally, data envelopment analysis is employed to the derived importance values in order to identify priorities of technologies, putting three perspectives together. It is expected that suggested approach could help technology planners to formulate strategy and policy for technological innovation.