Causality-based function network for identifying technological analogy

This paper suggests a cause-and-effect function network (CEFN) to support technology innovation in a direct way. To support this CEFN, a cause-and-effect relationship, a function model and an ontological approach are proposed. In the CEFN, technologies from different domains can be connected because defining technologies as functions provides abstractive, representative and formal expressions of them. Using ontology guarantees linguistic disambiguation in defining or searching heterogeneous technologies. Consequently, this paper summarizes construction of a CEFN which can be used as a searching system, by which users can get results by making a query using only ‘Action–Object’ (verb–noun) combinations. The proposed system can be used both for problem solving and for discovering technological opportunity. In this paper, a method consisting of procedure and analyses to build the CEFN is suggested, and a case study is performed to demonstrate the suggested method and system.

► We develop a cause-and-effect function network (CEFN) with patents.
► In CEFN, users can find inventive principles for problem solving.
► In CEFN, users can discover technological effects for new business opportunities.
► This study contributes to developing a method for technological convergence.