An empirical analysis on progress of technology fusion

In order to analyze the progress of research based on the integration of leading edge technologies, this paper introduces three types of patent data categorization, namely the Mix, Only and Mono-IPC type, respectively, expanding the concept of IPC Co-Occurrence. Additionally, the concept of innovation coordinate is introduced as a mean to investigate status and trends of R&D in the field of fuel cells for the years from 2000 to 2004. It is shown that yearly positions determined by the sets of patent applications in Japan concerning fuel cell kept changing during the period; occupation ratio of MIX type inventions decreased while those of Only and Mono-IPC type increased. The declining trend of MIX type, which is considered to be common in the convergence process of technology fusion toward the launch of new products based on cutting-edge technologies, is also observed in the field of Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS). Our future work includes both the trilateral comparison by adding European and US patent datasets, and also, hybrid analyses by introducing external data such as R&D expenditures to investigate the validity and/or the application limit of the present analysis in the quantitative study of the dynamics of innovation.