Tech

Mining
Digital Technology for Business
BUS 2401
Ajarn Haha
 Define Tech Mining

Learning Enumerate the phases of Tech

Objectives Mining

Understand key terms and

relationships to be used for the
practical application of a Tech
Mining software
Tech Mining

application of text mining tools to science and technology information, informed by

understanding of technological innovation processes.

see patterns, detect associations, and foresee opportunities.

Tech miners are technology watchers, meaning they analyze changing technologies.
 What R&D is being done on this technology?
Sample Tech
Mining Who is doing this R&D? Toward what probable market
objectives? (sometimes we focus on a particular competitor to
Questions profile what it is doing in multiple areas)

How does this technology fit organizational aims?

What are the prospects for successful commercialization?

Some reasons to do Tech Mining

Forecast Forecast likely development paths for emerging technologies

Identify Identify competitors, or collaborators, at the “fuzzy front end” of new product development

Identify Identify potential customers for your intellectual property (“IP”)

Discover Discover additional application arenas for the outputs of your R&D

Gauge Gauge market potential for prospective technology-based products and services

Be Be a wiser consumer of others’ science and technology

Manage Manage the risks of technology development and implementation based on better information.
 Intelligence phase

Three phases of Design and analysis phase

Tech Mining

Choice phase
Intelligence phase

involves planning for and collecting the data to be mined.

draws on multiple sources of information to create a robust picture of

developments in science, technology, and innovation.
Design and analysis phase

involves deriving knowledge from the data collected to solve specific

problems of innovation or technology management.

mixes deductive and inductive analyses

Choice phase

choice phase involves nominating options via tech mining and then selecting
the right innovative opportunities for your organization.

creating specific metrics or scorecards to gauge available options using the

criteria that are most salient for your target users.
 Tech Mining Users

Strategic planners (to target emerging technologies of core importance)

R&D managers and funders (e.g., to identify portfolio gaps, assess merits of new proposals)
Researchers, inventors, and project managers (e.g., to keep informed and facilitate networking)
New product developers and designers (to help select technological alternatives)
Procurement (to help assess alternative products and suppliers)
Process managers (to advise technology insertion)
Product managers (to roadmap technologies contributing to the product line)
Product service managers (to detect causes underlying maintenance problems)
Marketing experts (e.g., to identify new opportunities to leverage products and services)
Information professionals and librarians (to help justify acquisitions)
IP managers and specialists (e.g., to help assess desirability of patenting a disclosure)
 Anyone conducting innovative activities
Where is Tech
Mining most Companies depend on technological change to
needed? generate competitive products and services

Needs technological insertion to improve their

processes

Academic researchers are significant contributors to

the production of knowledge
 Technology-producing and science-based companies

Companies that consume technology produced by others

Companies Companies that must assess the market value of other companies
concerned
with changing Government agencies, with interests ranging across research (U.S. National
Institutes of Health) to operations (defense, World Health Organization) to
technology regulation (state Environmental Protection Agencies)

Universities

Non-profit (research, environmental, and policy organizations)

Four levels of Tech Mining analysis

Lists activity counts telling how much is taking place

highlights or key items to be called out from the

Breakouts from the lists list

showing relationships among chosen data type

Maps (i.e. keywords and authors)

Trends
 Author

Title

Mined Date
Information
fields Citations
(Terms)
Topics (keywords, title, abstract, classification codes,
patent codes, database codes)

Location (Journal or Conference source)

Some of the “term” relationships
Co-authorship patterns can ascertain development teams and
Teaming core individuals (who are the competitor’s knowledge
networks)

Profiling the collective body of knowledge cited by our

Research Community document set can figure out the prominence of the community
and certain individuals

Co-citation analysis Depictions of research fronts

Citation to our work is a metric of value imputed to the

Esteem research
Some of the “term” relationships

Knowledge Transfer Expertise Cluster Analysis

Citations to a body of research can Which authors address which Statistical procedures can help
be profiled to see what fields are topics? identify which topics tend to co-
picking up on the results or using occur, implying relationship.
the methods
 Self-reliance

• The extent to which actors cite their own work

to determine interdependencies.

Some of the Collaboration

“term” • extent to which institutions (or countries) work

together.
relationships
Core Sources

• which journals or conferences are most cited by

our documents overall, implying heavy reliance
on them.
Some of the “term” relationships

Impact Factor Currency Research Pace Engagement

Which journals are more What’s hot? Spotting Noting what proportion of whether an organization or
cited? – depicting research trends on activities citations, by and to, are country is still actively
has influence recent tells about how fast involved with this R&D
the R&D domain is domain
moving
Relational Analyses

certain terms occur together in multiple documents more often

Co-occurrence than expected, we have a basis of possibly significant
relationship

examining the number of times different publications are

Co-citation referenced together in the same documents

when two works reference a common third work in their

Bibliographic coupling bibliographies

received significant attention lately because of the “small

Authorship (or Institutional) networks world phenomenon.”
Co-occurence
Co-citation
Bibliographic
coupling
Authorship
(or
Institutional)
networks