Abstract
It has been proposed that main path analysis can be used to identify technological trajectories in patent-citation networks. In this paper, the method is applied to a network composed of one million US patents and eight million citations in order to trace the backbone of the technological trajectory of the semiconductor manufacturing industry. An in depth discussion of the method is presented, focusing on the many parameters that can be adjusted while applying it and on the consequences of adjusting any of them. Moreover, and differently from other papers on the subject, the result of the algorithm is analysed to determine if it indeed represents the most important technological contributions to the trajectory or if it is merely a collection of relevant and connected patents. This is made easier by the fact that the semiconductor industry has a clear and widely known technological trajectory that spans more than 50 years, Moore's law.
Highlights
Since the seminal paper by Dosi (1982), the concepts of technological paradigms and trajectories have captured the imagination of researchers and policy makers
Differently from the other papers on the subject, we look at the result of the algorithm, at the specific patents established by the method as the backbone of the technological trajectory in question, and validate if they represent the most important technological contributions to the trajectory or if they are merely a collection of relevant and connected patents, a sample of the population being studied
The external validation presented above has indicated that the main path cannot be said to represent the backbone of the technological trajectory of the semiconductor industry
Summary
Since the seminal paper by Dosi (1982), the concepts of technological paradigms and trajectories have captured the imagination of researchers and policy makers. In their paper, they compare the patents in the global main path and in the network of temporal main paths with information from pre-clinical tests (in the case of new inventions) and with products available commercially or in clinical use (in the case of incremental inventions to existing products) and match them using criteria such as design and inventor/owner. Absorptive Capacity Fulerene Carbon nanotubes LAN and Ethernet Artificial intervertebral disc Automobiles Telecommunication switches Hirsch index Fuel cells Lithium batteries Data quality Semiconductors Peer review research High voltage direct current transmissions Social network analysis (9) Weight (10) Type of main path
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