Technology opportunity discovery (TOD) from existing technologies and products: A function-based TOD framework

• A function-based TOD framework is proposed using text mining of large-scale patents.
• We define four TOD paths starting with a firm's existing technologies or products.
• We provide the TOD knowledge base construction procedure and the TOD logic by TOD path.
• Practical TOD examples for TOD paths are demonstrated using a prototype system.

Research into deriving technology opportunities from existing technologies or products (ETPs) is useful to technology-based firms, which have to expand their technology portfolios with limited resources. Therefore, this study proposes a function-based framework for technology opportunity discovery (TOD) from a firm's ETPs. This framework consists of: (1) a TOD knowledge base that structures information on products, technologies, and their functions, which has been extracted from 223,603 patents in various technical fields, and (2) a TOD logic that derives potential technology opportunities from an ETP using semantic functional similarities between technologies or products. This framework returns technology opportunities in terms of the four types of TOD paths: existing technology (eT) to technologies that can be developed by modifying eT, eT to products that can be produced by using eT, existing product (eP) to products that can be developed by modifying eP, and eP to technologies that can be adopted to improve eP. We implement the proposed framework in a prototype system, and demonstrate TOD cases, using several ETPs. This framework will contribute to creating systematic TOD based on current technological capability over a wide range of technologies, and become a basis for developing future automated technology intelligence systems.