Business planning based on technological capabilities: Patent analysis for technology-driven roadmapping ☆ Sungjoo Lee a,b , Byungun Yoon c, ⁎, Changyong Lee d , Jinwoo Park d a Department of Industrial & Information Systems Engineering, Ajou University, San 5, Woncheon-dong, Yeongtong-gu, Suwon 442-749, Republic of Korea b Centre for Technology Management, Mill Lane, University of Cambridge, CB2 1RX, UK c Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering, Dongguk University, Pil-dong 3 ga, Chung-gu, Seoul 100-715, Republic of Korea d Department of Industrial Engineering, Seoul National University, 599 Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, Seoul 151-742, Republic of Korea article info abstract Article history: Received 14 May 2008 Received in revised form 8 January 2009 Accepted 9 January 2009 This research responds to the needs of technology-driven business by focusing on how firms can find new business opportunities based on their technological capabilities. It proposes a technology-driven roadmapping processes that starts from capability analysis for technology planning and ends with business opportunity analysis for market planning. We suggest the use of patent data as a proxy measure of technological capability for this purpose and develop four analysis modules — Monitoring, Collaboration, Diversification, and Benchmarking — to support decision-making during the process. Various analysis techniques such as text-mining, network analysis, citation analysis and index analysis are applied to discover meaningful implications from the patent data, which are summarized in four maps — Actor-similarity map, Actor-relations map, Technology-industry map, and Technology-affinity map. For the purpose of illustration, RFID-related patents are collected and the 18 firms with the most patents used, focusing especially on the third biggest. We believe using roadmapping and patent analysis together can play complementary roles for each other. Putting roadmapping techniques together with patent analysis can increase the objectivity and reliability of technology roadmap, while using patent analysis restricted to technological information together with roadmapping techniques can ensure that a more valuable breadth of strategic information is extracted from patents. © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Technology roadmap Roadmapping Patent analysis Text-mining Network analysis Citation analysis RFID 1. Introduction The recent decade has seen markets shifting rapidly and a seemingly unlimited proliferation of new technologies, resulting in product life cycles becoming ever shorter [1]. It has become the norm for successful companies to have consistently to develop new products if they are to gain or maintain a competitive edge in such a turbulent environment [2]. In this situation, firms are focusing more attention on innovation and increasing investment in R&D as a source of that innovation. However, while this intensive investment is currently yielding considerable results, many firms do not know how to use these outputs strategically. The main problem underlying this situation is that business planning and technology planning are isolated from one other [3]. Investigating how to connect them, especially so that the analysis of technology capabilities can lead on to the identification of business opportunities, is an urgent issue. One of the tools that has been developed to address the issue is Technology Roadmap (TRM), which is known to be effective in connecting business and technology planning [4], where planning procedures mostly depend on the qualitative judgment of Technological Forecasting & Social Change 76 (2009) 769–786 ☆ It is confirmed that this item has not been published nor is currently being submitted elsewhere. ⁎ Corresponding author. Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering, School of Engineering, Dongguk University, 3-26, Pil-dong 3ga, Chung-gu, Seoul, 100-715, Republic of Korea. Tel.: +82 2 2260 8659; fax: +82 2 2260 8743. E-mail address: postman3@dongguk.edu (B. Yoon). 0040-1625/$ – see front matter © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.techfore.2009.01.003 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Technological Forecasting & Social Change