Comparing the Technology Trajectories of Solar PV and Solar Water Heaters in China: Using a Patent Lens

Abstract

China invests more in renewable energy than any other countries, such as in solar energy. The traditional literature maintains that these government-supported industries are more innovative than grassroots industries such as solar or thermal, which leads to debate. This study uses mixed methods, combining qualitative and quantitative approaches to compare the technology trajectories of leading solar water heater (SWH) and solar photovoltaic (PV) firms in China. It concentrates on the following three aspects: trajectories of key technologies, patent citation network, and type of collaboration. Our analyses show that technology trajectories differ significantly between leading SWH firms and PV firms in China. We find that the Chinese SWH firms are core to international knowledge networks, and are following a market-driven innovation mode. In contrast, Chinese PV firms are close to the center of the network and government-driven. Research suggests that grassroots innovation, by doing, using, and interaction (DUI), can create short-term market development models relying on China's traditional industry model, but cannot create a long-term international leading innovation model; only integrated science, technology, innovation modes (STI), and DUI innovation modes tend to result in international leadership in innovation.Solar PV and SWH are both low-carbon technologies that contribute to China's sustainable development. Yet, they have different technological, economic, and social characteristics and dynamics [7]. China is awakening to the need to fundamentally rethink the innovation pathways by which the two industries are developed and managed, for more effectively solving development bottlenecks, such as a lack of breakthrough innovations in the SWH industry and a lagging domestic market for the PV industry.This study uses mixed methods, combining qualitative and quantitative research approaches to compare the technology trajectories of leading solar water heater (SWH) and solar photovoltaic (PV) firms in China.This paper builds on previous research by Urban et al. [7] and uses patent analysis to examine the innovations of Chinese SWH and solar PV enterprises. Our main goal is to determine to what extent and how the PV and SWH patent knowledge bases differ in China.There is some literature on patent analysis for solar PV development in China [8], but less on SWH, and a knowledge gap exists regarding firm-level [9-11] technology pathways and innovation from a comparative-analysis perspective. According to Hu and Wang [12], 95% of SWH in China has the evacuated tube design. China Greentech Initiative (CGTI) estimates that Chinese firms hold 95% of the patents for core technologies of SWH worldwide [13]. However, academic research underpinning these figures is scarce. To observe the impact of technological innovation on enterprise expansion and market shares, and to provide empirical evidence for policy recommendations, this paper also explores the relationship between sales income and patent degree centrality through em...

Exploring the Development of Research, Technology and Business of Machine Tool Domain in New-Generation Information Technology Environment Based on Machine Learning

“…Compared with a qualitative review method, the use of quantitative analysis method can provide objective information to explore technology development based on available abundant scientific literature [19,41]. Many researchers have adopted the bibliometric, or patent analysis, method to investigate the evolution of technology [17,18,41,42].…”

“…Scientific literature has been considered as a valuable and rich source of knowledge or a key proxy about technology development, reflecting the current technological focuses in their respective discipline and the trend of technology development in both theory and practice [14,15]. Bibliometric or the patent analysis has been widely used by many researchers to analyze scientific literature quantitatively, which is regarded as a more systematic, objective, and effective method compared to qualitative literature review approach to explore the changes of specific discipline [16][17][18][19][20]. For example, Ernst analyzed the patent data in the machine tool industry to detect and trace the changes in Computerized Numerical Control (CNC) technology [21].…”

Exploring the Future Development of Research, Technology and Business of Machine Tool Domain in New-Generation Information Technology Environment Based on Machine Learning

“…Scientific literatures have been considered as a valuable and rich source of knowledge or a key proxy about technology development, reflecting the current technological focuses in their respective disciplines and the trend of technology development in both theory and practice [14,15]. Bibliometric or patent analysis method have been widely employed by many researchers to analyze scientific literatures quantitatively, which was regarded as a more systematic, objective, and effective method compared to qualitative literature review approach to explore the evolution trend of specific discipline [16][17][18][19]. For example Ernst analyzed the patent data in the machine tool industry to explore the future development trend of CNC technology [20].…”

“…Compared with qualitative review method, based on available abundant scientific literatures the use of quantitative analysis method can provide objective information to explore technology future development [19,40]. Many researchers have adopted bibliometrics or patent analysis method to investigate future evolution of technology [17,40].…”

A novel method to identify emerging technologies using a semi-supervised topic clustering model: a case of 3D printing industry

“…We refer to these methods, collectively, as technological topic segmentation in this paper. These literatures usually use word/citation-based methods that include topic trends (Watts and Porter 2003;Guo et al 2011;De Rassenfosse et al 2013), co-word (Furukawa et al 2015) or term-clumping (Zhang et al 2014), citation or co-citations (Leydesdorff and Rafols 2009;Zhou et al 2019;Kajikawa and Takeda 2008;Shibata et al 2011;Cho and Shih 2011;Kong et al 2017;Zhou et al 2016Zhou et al , 2018, and combinations of these methods (Zhang et al 2010;Wang et al 2018b;Small et al 2014;Breitzman and Thomas 2015). However, these methods have some limitations, depicted as follows: (1) The methods are word-or citation-based, and they have limited capability to utilize the semantic information that is embedded in the publications and patents.…”