Quantifying technological change as a combinatorial process

Analyzing development patterns in research networks and technology

“…In recent times, especially network-based approaches have been established as promising methods for assessing technological change, as they allow to portray technology in their generic definition: the (re)combination of existing and new technological capabilities. Regarding this, Parraguez et al (2020) identified three different kinds of approaches for network generation, namely the usage of (1) explicit links and references between sources, (2) keywords in documents, and (3) predefined categories.…”

“…Within the second group, technology-related keywords are used to analyze change in textual documents. Some of the most often used methods therefore are the construction of co-occurrence networks or co-word networks (Parraguez et al 2020;Joung and Kim 2017). Within the last decade, a rising amount of related studies have been conducted, using either patent texts and abstracts (Joung and Kim 2017;Yoon and Kim 2011;Lee et al 2008), research project descriptions (Mogoutov et al 2008), scientific publications (Madani 2015;Chappin and Ligtvoet 2014), or a combination of these sources (most recently Parraguez et al 2020).…”

“…Some of the most often used methods therefore are the construction of co-occurrence networks or co-word networks (Parraguez et al 2020;Joung and Kim 2017). Within the last decade, a rising amount of related studies have been conducted, using either patent texts and abstracts (Joung and Kim 2017;Yoon and Kim 2011;Lee et al 2008), research project descriptions (Mogoutov et al 2008), scientific publications (Madani 2015;Chappin and Ligtvoet 2014), or a combination of these sources (most recently Parraguez et al 2020). While the keyword approach has some main advantages, especially regarding the possibility of using multiple kinds of sources simultaneously, there are also shortcomings, which have to be considered.…”

“…2. It is based on a similar procedure used by Parraguez et al (2020) who used the basic RV coefficient to quantify technological change based on terms in documents. However, the underlying network conception, used data sources, and the application field in the present paper vary considerably.…”

“…The second aim is to provide deeper insight into transformation processes within a currently highly transformative technological area: the automotive industry. We therefore adapt a methodology of a recent publication by Parraguez et al (2020) and modify it for creating a network-based indicator for measuring both structural change in research networks and technological change. Afterward, we use this indicator to analyze transformation processes in the German automotive research network and the structure of automotive-related German patents as well as their co-evolution.…”