ABSTRACT

Effectively identifying technological threats from competitors and assessing their possible impact directly affects the company’s interests and security. This study proposes an early identification approach for technological threats based on patent portfolio analysis. The approach measures and aggregates three dimensions of analysis – technological maturity, technological similarity, and the technological capability gap between a company and its competitors – in a range of technological fields. The novelty of this approach is that it uses patent portfolios to evaluate the level of technological threats faced by companies and to identify technological fields associated with high threat levels. The empirical research results show that this approach has the following advantages (1) it can address the shortcomings of previous studies that identified technological threats on the basis of a single dimension. (2) It is possible to evaluate the level of technological threats faced by the company in a variety of technological fields at the same time. (3) This approach is capable of determining the causes of technological threats faced by a company in each technological field and of providing effective decision-making support for companies that need to formulate reasonable response strategies to counter technological threats.

摘要

有效识别来自竞争对手的技术威胁并评估其可能产生的影响，直接影响到公司的利益和安全。本研究提出了一种基于专利组合分析的技术威胁早期识别方法。该方法在一系列技术领域测量和汇总分析的三个维度——技术成熟度、技术相似性以及公司与其竞争对手之间的技术能力差距。这种方法的新颖之处在于它使用专利组合来评估公司面临的技术威胁水平，并识别与高威胁水平相关的技术领域。实证研究结果表明，该方法具有以下优点：（1）可以解决以往研究基于单一维度识别技术威胁的不足。（2）可以同时评估公司在多个技术领域面临的技术威胁程度。(3) 该方法能够确定企业在各个技术领域面临的技术威胁的成因，为需要制定合理的应对策略以应对技术威胁的企业提供有效的决策支持。