Title: An integration of grounded theory and chance discovery to explore the technology opportunity

Authors: Tzu-Fu Chiu

Addresses: Department of Industrial Management and Enterprise Information, Aletheia University, No. 32, Chen-Li Street, Tamsui District, New Taipei City, Taiwan

Abstract: To explore the technology opportunity is an important task for managers and stakeholders to grasp the emerging trends of their industries. Solar cell, one of green energies, is growing at a fast pace with its clean and renewable characters. In addition, the patent data contains plentiful technological information from which it is worthwhile to extract further knowledge. Therefore, an integrated approach of grounded theory and chance discovery has been proposed in order to analyse the patent data and to explore the technology opportunity. Grounded theory is employed to provide a procedural basis for guiding the research processes, while chance discovery is adopted to provide the mining techniques for discovering the relations within the textual data. Consequently, the relation types were recognised, the tendency of solar cell technology was identified, and the active companies and significant technical subcategories in the solar cell industry were also observed.

Keywords: grounded theory; chance discovery; technology opportunity; solar cells; patent data; solar energy; solar power; patents.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIIDS.2012.047002

International Journal of Intelligent Information and Database Systems, 2012 Vol.6 No.3, pp.231 - 254

Received: 16 Jul 2010
Accepted: 10 Mar 2011
Published online: 16 Aug 2014 *

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