A Novel Integrated Approach for Roadmapping Disruptive Technologies From a Technology Convergence Perspective

With the rapid developments in science and technology, technologies from various fields are increasingly converging. Technology convergence has become a primary source of disruptive technologies (DTs). Revealing the mechanisms of technology convergence in DTs and identify their evolutionary pathways and trends is of great significance for enterprise's R&D strategic decision-making and government's innovation policy formulation. Previous studies on the evolutionary pathways of technology convergence have mainly relied on citation information and International Patent Classification (IPC) co-classification analysis. However, measuring technology convergence using patent citation information has a time lag, and patent IPC codes fail to capture microtechnological changes. Moreover, technology roadmapping (TRM) is widely recognized as a valuable method for studying evolutionary pathways and offering a systematic approach for mapping the evolution of functions or performance in DTs. However, existing TRM methods have mainly relied on expert opinion, which is a time-consuming and costly approach. Therefore, we integrated patent co-classification analysis, subject-action-object–prepositional phrase (SAO-PP) semantic analysis, and TRM to propose a framework for monitoring DTs' evolutionary pathways, revealing the technology convergence characteristics of DTs and identifying their trends. We employed smartphones as a case study to demonstrate the validity and flexibility of this framework. This paper provides a novel approach for roadmapping DTs' evolutionary pathways and revealing the technology convergence characteristics in the emergence of DTs, thereby aiding the comprehension of DTs' emergence and development trends. This paper also will be of interest to experts in smartphone technology R&D.