Forecasting Technology Development Based on Patent Information

Abstract

It is to an advantage of manufacturers to forecast the next generation technology as precisely as possible in this survival and competition age. The most popular way follows the trend of technology of interest and the result of fundamental research. While reliable, this approach ca predict only the short term future and cannot consider hidden, heuristic development by competitors, because the information concerned is rather limited in a certain organization. On the other hand, patent information is much more reliable and feasible as inventions are generated from fundamental research conducted all over the world. The present paper makes it clear that patent information can yield fruitful results such as a predicted year of commercialization for a particular technology, if the patent information is properly processed. A method for grouping the technology field, summing up the patent information, and forecasting the year of realization of a specified technology is proposed and examined in the current paper.