A new model based on patent data for technology early warning research

Abstract

As technology competition among enterprises become more intense, technical crisis occurs in enterprises, such as technological substitution and technology divulgence. Thus, it is necessary to warn enterprises of those technical crises that can be called technology early warning. As patent data contains much technology information, it becomes an efficient source to analyse technology. This paper proposes a technology early warning model based on patent data to help enterprises execute technology early warning from the perspective of its technology status. To do so, we set ten indicators from four aspects to evaluate the enterprise's technology status at first, calculate the index of enterprise's technical crisis with AHP, and then propose five early warning levels. China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec Group) and the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) are taken as comparative case studies.