Summary: | 博士 === 長榮大學 === 經營管理研究所 === 103 === The main theme inherent in this dissertation is that technological capability is not fully understood and, as a field of inquiry, it remains understudied. This research contends that patent information is a manifestation of inventive activities, which are in turn based on certain technological capabilities accumulated over time. This study uses the two perspectives of data mining into knowledge and the knowledge work concept to synthesize this research problem. The objective of this study is to investigate the evolution of the intellectual structure of technological capabilities and to apply a theory of invisible network of knowledge (INK) through which the most important publications and the most important scholars as well as the correlations among these publications.
This dissertation is composed of three related studies. The main theme inherent in the three constituent manuscripts of this dissertation, each in various stages of the publication process, is that technological capability is not fully understood, and, as a field of inquiry, it remains understudied. Each of the study in this dissertation will modestly advance the state of our knowledge of the subject in different directions by applying a set of tools, measures, concepts, and procedures to take advantage of invaluable competitive information. Study 1 provides a “methodology of knowledge network”. The study tries to create a new concept of “an invisible network of knowledge production in a discipline (an INK Model),” which was used for this study. In addition to the advantages of the traditional concept of a knowledge network, the INK is a more comprehensive model developed by co-citation network analysis. Study 2 states that patent databases have stored a wealth of publicly held and verified knowledge that have not received the attention they fully deserve. This study examines whether there is a knowledge network behind these studies in terms of a theoretical landscape of theory essentials. All key nodes point to a strong presence of the constituents of theory essentials of this long-established interdisciplinary field. In contrast with Study 1 and 2, which figure out the knowledge network of patent studies, Study 3 is devoted to studying another type of patent activities. In order to assess the progress China has made in technology development, this study examines inventive activities in China and the pattern of international collaborations between China and other major industrialized countries or regions. This study analyzes the patent data from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) focusing on joint patent applications between China and the eight most inventive OECD countries and two Asian economic entities (South Korea and Taiwan).
The contributions in the three studies are divided between developing new concepts, patent methodology for practical application, and testing those concepts. These three studies on aspects of patents and technology-based capabilities have modestly pushed forward the research frontier from crude database mining toward, at least, a basis for the acquisition of knowledge, if not the knowledge itself. The studies have developed both the necessary theoretical conceptualization and practical measures for empiricism to assist us in detecting patterns of concentration, specialization, and collaboration in technology-based capabilities.
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