A Novel Integrated Approach for Roadmapping Disruptive Technologies From a Technology Convergence Perspective

With the rapid developments in science and technology, technologies from various fields are increasingly converging. Technology convergence has become a primary source of disruptive technologies (DTs). Revealing the mechanisms of technology convergence in DTs and identifying their evolutionary pathways and trends are of great significance for the enterprise's R&D strategic decision-making and the government's innovation policy formulation. Previous studies on the evolutionary pathways of technology convergence have mainly relied on citation information and International Patent Classification (IPC) coclassification analysis. However, measuring technology convergence using patent citation information has a time lag, and patent IPC codes fail to capture microtechnological changes. Moreover, technology roadmapping (TRM) is widely recognized as a valuable method for studying evolutionary pathways and offering a systematic approach to mapping the evolution of functions or performance in DTs. However, existing TRM methods have mainly relied on expert opinion, which is a time-consuming and costly approach. Therefore, in this article, we integrated patent coclassification analysis, subject-action-object–prepositional phrase semantic analysis, and TRM to propose a framework for monitoring DTs' evolutionary pathways, revealing the technology convergence characteristics of DTs and identifying their trends. We employed smartphones as a case study to demonstrate the validity and flexibility of this framework. This article provides a novel approach for roadmapping DTs' evolutionary pathways and reveals the technology convergence characteristics in the emergence of DTs, thereby aiding the comprehension of DTs' emergence and development trends. This article also will be of interest to experts in smartphone technology R&D.