Investigating Company’s Technical Development Directions Based on Internal Knowledge Inheritance and Inventor Capabilities: The Case of Samsung Electronics

Fang Han,Sejun Yoon,Hyunseok Park,Nagarajan Raghavan

doi:10.3390/su14053117

Abstract

This paper proposes a new method to analyze technical development directions of a company using knowledge persistence-based main path analysis and co-inventor network analysis. Main path analysis is used for identifying internal technical knowledge flows and inheritances over time within a company, and knowledge persistence-based main path analysis can well identify major knowledge streams of each sub-domain within a relatively small knowledge network generated by one company without omission of significant inventions. A co-inventor network analysis is used for identifying key inventors who can be represented as the major technical capabilities of a company. The method is a meaningful attempt in that it applies knowledge persistence-based main path analysis to analyzing a company’s internal technical development and combines the two approaches to provide the information on both base technical capabilities and new technical characteristics. To test the method, this paper conducted an empirical study of Samsung Electronics. The results show that the method generated major knowledge flows and identified key inventors of Samsung Electronics. In particular, the method can identify the base technical knowledge as the ‘backbone’ and newly injected knowledge as ‘fresh blood’ for forecasting future technical development. Based on the identified clue information, this paper forecasted the potential future technologies for each sub-domain of Samsung Electronics with technical keywords and descriptions.

Highlights

Technologies have been considered as a key resource for achieving and sustaining a competitive advantage
The main paths of Samsung Electronics are generated by knowledge persistence (KP)-based main path analysis, and 54 patents on the main paths were identified (Figure 2)
This paper proposes a new method to analyze technical development directions of a company using the KP-based main path analysis and co-inventor network analysis

Summary

Introduction

Technologies have been considered as a key resource for achieving and sustaining a competitive advantage. The internal technical capability as a basis for obtaining new technical knowledge can determine the technical competitiveness and development directions of companies. Since it fundamentally requires much time and effort for technical human resources to develop and improve the internal technical capability, most tech-oriented companies, even service companies, devote much attention to developing it through continual. Companies should provide relatively better customer’s values than competitors, and so it is essential to know competitors’. Technical capabilities and understand their developmental directions through technical monitoring.

Methods

Results

Conclusion