On the linkage between industries and technologies: patent citation analysis

The relationship between industry and technology is intrinsically close and even interactive, since emerging technology may accelerate the development of new industry, whereas declining technology may deteriorate the status of conventional industry. Therefore, the knowledge of such linkage may facilitate the policy making process on the macro level and the strategy development process on the corporate level. However, the behavioral pattern of the structural relationship between industry and technology is hard to standardize or theorize about. This pattern is an empirical phenomenon, but is not easily visible and, thus, it is intractable to develop quantitative measures and/or apply econometric methods. To overcome this limitation, the main approach used in this study is to employ patent data and to apply patent citation analysis. In addition to patent citation analysis, such supplementary methods as network analysis are used. First, the links within the industries and the technologies are analyzed through network analysis based on the patent citation information. Second, some indicators are operationally defined. These indicators are utilized to describe the characteristics of each industry and technology. Fourth, the structural relationship between industry and technology is analyzed. The analysis is conducted based on the USPTO database.