Identifying opportunities for sustainable business models in manufacturing: Application of patent analysis and generative topographic mapping

Abstract

Early identification of business opportunities is critical for technology-based manufacturers seeking to develop new sustainable business models (SBMs) for future competitive advantages. However, there exists an insufficiency of identifying business opportunities compared to previous studies which have focused mainly on technology opportunities and service opportunities. To fill this research gap, this study proposes a new systematic approach to identify business opportunities for new SBMs based on information relating to the manufacturers' technologies and patents. To illustrate, an example in the mining machinery industry was examined as a case study. The results demonstrated that 255 patent documents relating to the product were collected. Next, latent Dirichlet allocation was used to generate 26 business topics, which were categorized into the 9 building blocks of the business model canvas (BMC). Then, generative topographic mapping (GTM) was applied to identify 13 vacuums and related technology-driven business opportunities on the basis of BMC-based patent-business vectors. Finally, dynamic business modelling was conducted, which integrated sustainable BMCs and system dynamics in order to evaluate and rank these business opportunities. The proposed approach can promote consensus building between the technology and business planning departments on developing technology-driven SBMs in both public and private sectors.