nanotechnology innovation system: an empirical analysis of the emerging actors and collaborative...

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT, VOL. 60, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2013 687

Nanotechnology Innovation System: An EmpiricalAnalysis of the Emerging Actors

and Collaborative NetworksNazrul Islam and Sercan Ozcan

Abstract—This research presents an empirical analysis of theemerging actors and collaborative networks in nanotechnology.Patenting activities and technology diffusion in high-tech sectorsare being increasingly driven by collaborative, international, andtechnology-based new entrants. To support the technology transferprocess within or across country, this study examines how patentcollaborations occur and how the actors interact with each other.The research develops a taxonomy that could make a significant im-pact on accurate nanotechnology patent data quests and increasesthe reliability of the analyses. The findings show that significantlinkages of the U.S., Korean, and Japanese actors appear as be-ing highly centralized around key players within their own na-tional innovation systems. The results suggest that strengtheningthe linkages between scientific and corporate actors may elimi-nate many barriers and accelerate the diffusion of technology intothe commercialized stage. This process will be faster if academicresearchers focus on the requirements of industry, and the newinventions are linked with the needs of large organizations.

Index Terms—Collaborative networks, emerging actors, empir-ical study, nanotechnology, patent analysis, systems of innovation.

I. INTRODUCTION

IN a specific country or technology, the key actors who playa central role in the technology diffusion process may be dif-

ferent. The linkage between key actors in one research domainmay vary to that of another, and these different linkages maylead to more or less productive innovation systems [1]–[3]. Withregard to supporting the technology transfer process within oracross countries, it can be assumed that the role of dominant ac-tors may differ from country to country as countries technologytransfer processes may be driven by government initiatives, bypublic institutions, and private companies. To analyze patent-ing activities at the country level with a particular focus on aspecific technology would be one way to see which settings ofthe innovation process are more productive, and so improve theeffectiveness of patenting systems and the diffusion of new in-ventions. Many changes in the collaboration structure betweenvarious actors in an innovation system lead to interconnection of

Manuscript received September 18, 2012; revised April 11, 2013; acceptedMay 20, 2013. Date of publication June 17, 2013; date of current versionOctober 16, 2013. Review of this manuscript was arranged by DepartmentEditor C. Tucci.

The authors are with the School of Management and Business, AberystwythUniversity, Aberystwyth, Wales, SY23 3DD, U.K. (e-mail: [email protected];[email protected]).

Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available onlineat http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TEM.2013.2265352

higher numbers of, and more diverse actors. Increased securityof patent authorization and profitability of patenting encouragesinventors to participate more in the patent generation system.The necessary high costs of R&D and risks of unsuccessful com-mercialization attempts are forcing companies to participate ininnovation systems [4] and [5]. Even multinational companiesare focusing on their key capabilities and obtaining complemen-tary technologies from other organizations such as universities,institutes, and their collaborative firms [6]. As a result, there hasbeen a rapid rise in the number of companies that are collaborat-ing in patenting activities and the linkages between collaborativeorganizations are getting stronger. Growing interrelationshipsamong countries in the context of collaboration within differentaspects of technology have fostered the usage and implementa-tion of patents with the purpose of ensuring funds are invested ininnovation and increasing the dissemination of technology [7].In addition to that, increased competition in some markets hasresulted in companies relying on granted patents and this hasmotivated them to focus on research activities. High R&D in-vestments support the increase in the number of granted patentsbut cannot entirely throw light on the increase of innovations.Patent generation activity thus appears to be one of the crucialelements in the increasingly interlinked participations betweenvarious academic and corporate organizations.

It is widely accepted that patent documents provide a valuableresource for analyzing a technological field. Quantitative anal-ysis on patents is used as measurement for the results of inven-tion and innovation related activities. There are plenty of patentstudies that focus on the association among technological ad-vancement and economic progression [8]–[11], the research andinnovation developments in a global context [12]–[14]; and thestage of technology development in a particular sector [15]–[17].A collaborative patent generation system is compatible with theidea of changing a centralized approach on organizational re-search that is more and more reliant on knowledge networksand markets rather than individual dominant players [18]–[23].Patenting activities and technology diffusion in high-tech re-gions are being increasingly driven by collaborative, interna-tional, and technology-based new entrants such as spinoffs andSMEs [24], [25]. Another significant activity within collabora-tive networks is the role of public research organizations [26],[27] their activities have increased the commercialization ofnew inventions as there is much publicly funded research be-ing introduced to the market [27], [28]. Considering the obviousbenefits of patenting activities, governments are making consid-erable efforts to support academic and corporate organizations

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688 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT, VOL. 60, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2013

with funds in view of the long-term relationship between tech-nology and the economy [29]. Also, governments’ are tryingto introduce a patent authorization system that makes patentedtechnology more readily available to ensure other interestedcompanies have access to basic inventions [30]. If many patentswere granted on research tools for an emerging technology, itwould not allow other individuals or organizations to becomeinvolved in that particular area. In the case of nanotechnology,many patents that have been granted are currently available forother organizations as such patenting activities took place in the1980s, and patens are granted for a maximum of 20 years. Thisstudy specifically focuses on collaborative patenting activitiesin nanotechnology, as strong relationships between private andpublic actors have gained importance in improving the efficiencyof innovation systems. The main objective of this research is toexplore the emerging and dominant actors in nanotechnologyand to show the relationship between the actors. With regardto supporting the technology transfer process within or acrosscountries, this study interprets the clusters and the collaborativenetworks that enhance the commercialization of new inventions.A comparative analysis is also presented with a particular fo-cus on nanotechnology innovation systems so that governments,universities, and private sector companies can benefit from theseresearch findings.

Nanotechnology is considered as an emerging technology[31]–[33] and is expected to be one of the major future tech-nologies, as its offerings are regarded as involving radical in-novation [34], [35]. Previous studies were conducted by Porterand Youtie [36] to look at nanotechnology positions in rela-tion to other disciplines by considering its multidisciplinarynature. Another similar work was conducted by Miyazaki andIslam [37], focusing on cross-country comparisons, actors, andinstitutions by using similar quantitative methods (bibliometricsand tech mining) to understand the sectorial innovation systemsin nanotechnology from a global perspective. Shapira et al. [38]focused on an overview of corporate entry into nanotechnologythrough patents and publications and nanotechnology innova-tion factors in the shift to commercialization. Huang et al. [39]also completed similar work by presenting a longitudinal patentanalysis on nanotechnology patents between 1976 and 2002,which included content map analysis and citation network anal-ysis by obtaining the required data from individual countries,institutions, and technology fields. An examination of previousstudies suggests that first of all there is a need for an up-to-datestudy in the nanotechnology field as it is an emerging field whichis constantly changing. This study fulfils this need by analyzingall the nanotechnology patent documents that were available upto March 2012. Second, previous studies used different method-ology in terms of collecting patent documents while this paperdevelops a taxonomy for nanotechnology patent data searcheswhich increases the efficiency and reliability of nanotechnologypatent analysis.

II. LITERATURES AND CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

This study looks at the nanotechnology innovation systemin terms of interactions of various actors within this system.

Fig. 1. Technoeconomic network (TEN) framework (adapted and modifiedfrom Callon 1991).

The innovation system comprises the linkages and flow of in-formation among actors such as inventors and organizationsin terms of innovative processes [1], [20], [40]. An innovationsystem model aims to describe the processes and interactionsbetween the actors to facilitate the value chain from the begin-ning of an invention to a commercialized innovation stage [41].The system of innovation concept has gained the attention ofa growing number of researchers involved in the fundamen-tals of an innovation system whereby they explain innovationin terms of actors, processes, and flow of information. Variousstudies have been published in the literature based around theinnovation system concept, including national innovation sys-tems [1]–[3], regional innovation systems [42], sectoral innova-tion systems [43], technological innovation systems [44], andfunctions in innovation systems [45]. Looking at these differentmodels, the notion common to all of them is to explain how aninnovation system develops and diffuses and utilizes innovationswithin different contexts. Another framework that illustrates theroles and linkages of actors within an innovation system is theframework of techno-economic network (TEN) [46] (see Fig. 1).The TEN framework is a useful framework to analyze innova-tion systems in a comprehensive manner for a chosen sector.There are three main poles within the TEN framework, namelythe Technology Pole, Science Pole and Market Pole. Anotherminor pole that is presented within this system is the FinancePole, due to the indirect links actors within finance have withinnovation. Each of these poles is categorized by the type of ac-tors and intermediaries with regard to their duties. As presentedin Fig. 1, intermediaries vary in terms of tangible and intangibleresources for the actors within TEN. Moreover, Fig. 1 showshow these poles are linked to each other in terms of their director indirect linkages and also it presents which intermediariesthey are linked by, such as Transfer Pole (between Science and

ISLAM AND OZCAN: NANOTECHNOLOGY INNOVATION SYSTEM: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF THE EMERGING ACTORS 689

Technology Poles) and Development Pole (between Technologyand Market Poles).

After comparing different approaches for an innovation sys-tem, the TEN model has been chosen for this study becausethe TEN framework focuses on the networks, within an inno-vation system. It covers the respective actors interacting witheach other under a particular institutional infrastructures, or setof infrastructures, and who are involved in the generation, dif-fusion, and utilization of technology. For a national innovationsystem, its limitations would be based on national boundaries,but technological differences determine the boundaries of anyparticular technological system. With the nanotechnology inno-vation system, one would expect that it would not be confinedby national boundaries. There are two main reasons that lead usto this supposition. First, there are active global players withinthe nanotechnology system that are known from previous stud-ies [38], [47], [48], and it would be expected that these organiza-tions would have linkages at the global level in terms of their re-search activities and their participations with research institutes.Second, nanotechnology is an emerging field and some otherstudies [49] have shown that this multidisciplinary field has animpact on various technologies. Accordingly, it is not possibleto use a sectoral innovation system model either as nanotechnol-ogy is involved in a widespread field including but not limitedto nanoelectronics, nanomaterials, and nanobiotechnology. As aresult, the TEN framework appears as the most effective modelfor this study. One advantage of using this framework is thatthis study aims to use patent analysis to look at the linkagesof actors, as patents are one of the main components withinthe Technology Pole. Consequently, it is possible to look at thelinkages and collaborations between the Technology and Sci-ence poles and the Technology and Market poles. Overall, theTEN model provides a simple, comprehensive, and flexible con-ceptual framework which is suitable for this study, as the aim ofthis study is to analyze the collaboration mechanisms within thenanotechnology innovation system. By analyzing current patentsources and collaboration mechanisms, it will be possible to seehow current technology sources are generated and how theseactors are linked to each other in terms of shared patents. Thepurpose of this study is to analyze the nanotechnology innova-tion system with respect to the linkages of actors in terms ofnational differences and similarities, the innovation system pro-cess, the type of networks or clusters, and national technologycapabilities. In accordance with the TEN framework, this studyformulates the following expectations:

1) Actors within the nanotechnology field will have cross-disciplinary or cross-sectorial linkages for their researchactivities.

2) The nanotechnology innovation system will consist of dif-ferent types of linkages between actors.

3) The significance level for linkages between poles may dif-fer due to regional differences or involvement of differenttypes of organizations.

This study attempts to answer the following fundamentalquestions: 1) How public and private organizations are linked inthe nanotechnology innovation system in terms of patenting ac-tivity and to what extent the linkages between the various actors

Fig. 2. Outline of Research Methodology.

occur taking national/international boundaries into account; 2)How the trend is changing with respect to the dominant actorswithin the nanotechnology innovation system.

III. DATA AND METHODOLOGY

This study applies a tech-mining methodology, proposed byPorter and Cunningham [50], combining bibliometrics usingpatent abstracts from patent databases. Tech mining analysesrelations between actors and technologies within a given in-novation system, using specialist keywords, derived from theNano Science and Technology Institute publications. The sub-sequent analysis was performed using dedicated tech miningsoftware Thomson Data Analyzer (TDA), automating mining,and clustering of terms occurring in article abstracts and articledescriptors such as authors, affiliations, or keywords that arerecommended by the Georgia Institute of Technology. The out-line of this paper including methodology and the general processcan be seen as shown in Fig. 2. In general, gathering the validpatent data, efficient analysis of large data sets, and handlingand interpreting the outcomes of the analysis is crucial for theaccuracy of the results. In the methodology, sampling and itslink to generalizability and quality of implications is the key tothe whole research process [51]. It is essential for this paper tojustify the type of samples, the internal validity, and externalvalidity of this research [52], as they are highly interconnected.

In considering the validity and reliability of this research,one of the key issues is to use an expedient patent database interms of the required size and the coverage of patents. For thispurpose, various patent databases were compared to find thebest offering in terms of the number of patents offered and thecoverage of patent authorities as shown in Table I. Strengthsand weaknesses of each patent database are considered. For


TABLE ITAXONOMY FOR SEARCHING NANOTECHNOLOGY PATENT DATA

this research, some criteria were crucial, namely the patent au-thority coverage, maximum hit list, availability of various patentdatabase export options, and the maximum allowed export quan-tity of patent documents. This is due to the fact that the requiredpatent database was large and exceeded some of the patentdatabase providers’ maximum allowed patents document exportoption. Also, Delphion and MicroPatent provide a limited num-ber of patent authorities. Their competitor, PatBase, does have a

significant number of patent authority coverage but there areservice restrictions in terms of search hit list and the numberof patent documents that would limit the data size. As a resultof this comparison between various patent database providers,Thomson innovation was the preferred patent database as therequired large data set could be gathered and analyzed by TDA.Additionally, the provider of the Thomson Data analyzer andThomson innovation patent database is the same organization


so the patent data and the software are optimized by the TDAexport function and therefore the gathered results are improvedeven further.

One of the biggest challenges in a patent analysis is to gatherrequired patent data by selecting the appropriate terms for thesearch so that the data set includes the relevant patents and ex-cludes unnecessary patents, thus increasing the validity of the re-search. Moreover, it is an even greater challenge if the analyzedfield is an emerging technology and there are many similar termsthat are used by other technologies. In the case of nanotechnol-ogy, the USPTO created a nanotechnology patent class labeled977, and its subcategories, to gather all the nanotechnology re-lated patents within this category. This was a good approachfor considering the consistency of the nanotechnology-relatedpatent analysis, as this field is very dispersed with various ap-plications in areas such as the electronic, biological, and roboticfields. The problem of this new nanotechnology patent classi-fication was that nanorelated inventions were patented first inthe 1980s, so many patent authorities such as USPTO had toassign teams to reclassify the records of patents granted underthe previous system. Now, the majority of existing nanotechnol-ogy related patents have been reclassified into their respectivepatent classifications and new nanotechnology patents are clas-sified in accordance with the USPTO system. One problem infinding nanotechnology related patents is that there are somepatents within the nanotechnology class that are not related tothe nanotechnology field.

Various approaches are followed by patent analysts and re-searchers in this field. There are many limitations and draw-backs in terms of the search terms that are used and the nan-otechnology patents which are obtained. There are two mainapproaches in this field. One of the approaches is to use allthe required nanotechnology related terms such as nanotube,nanowire, and nanosensors in the patent search and to try toget the highest possible hit list as a result. This type of searchmay be faced by two major problems. The first one is that theresearcher may not cover all the required nanoterms and as aresult they may not be able to access all the required nanotech-nology related patents, for example, colloidal crystals, quantumdot, and fullerene do not include the term “nano,” but they in-volve nanotechnology related patents. Another issue with thistype of research is that there are many patents that mentionnanotechnology-related materials within patent documents thatare not for a nanotechnology invention. For example, if the de-tails of some of the patents are analyzed, it can be seen that thenanotechnology-related term is used in the description of a non-nanotechnology patent that states the invention can also be usedwith one type of nanomaterial such as nanotube. As a result, it ispossible to include unnecessary patents and exclude necessarypatents in the analyzed patent data set. The second commonapproach in nanotechnology-related patent analysis is to obtainall the patents that include terms that start with such terms as“nano” or “quantum” by using Boolean search logic such asnano∗ OR quantum∗ and excluding all the unnecessary patentsfrom the result which include terms such as “nanosecond” and“nanometer.” The problem with this approach is that there aremany nanotechnology-related patents that include those terms,

for instance there are many nanotechnology patents that in-clude both “nanowire” and “nanosecond.”. For example, largecompanies such as IBM have many electronic-related patentsthat have nanotechnology-related terms and “nanosecond” intheir patents, so those patents would be eliminated as well. Aswas explained with the previous approach, there is a possibilityof obtaining unrelated patents that mention the possible com-patibility of a particular nanomaterial or nanoparticle with thepatented invention.

Huang et al. [53] analyzed patents and publication researchapproaches, and categorized them into two broad strategies:lexical queries and patent classification queries. Authors men-tion both advantages and disadvantages of these two forms ofquery. Porter et al. [54] use lexical queries to gather all patentswith nanoterms but excluding those patents that have nonre-lated nano terms such as “nanosecond.” Given the limitationsand drawbacks of the above approaches, our method uses a com-bination of the two, as we use patent classifications and lexicalqueries. The reason why both approaches are followed is be-cause as is mentioned in Scheu et al.’s [55] study, only usingpatent codes has a weakness in that unrelated patents appear inthe patent data due to their wrong classification. It was thoughtbest to gather all the nanotechnology classified patents such as977 by USPTO, B82 by IPC, Y01 N by ECLA, and 3C082by Japanese F-Terms. All irrelevant patents classified withinthese categories could be eliminated by using Boolean searchlogic with very broad nanotechnology-related terms, such as“nano∗,” “quantum,∗” and “fullerene∗.” Afterward, DWPI (Der-went Patent Index) was used to exclude patents that appearedmore than once in the search results, as, due to the nature ofpatent applications, inventions are patented more than once bydifferent patent authorities to secure the invention in that re-spective country or region. For the nanotechnology case, thefollowing search terms were used:

(AIOE = (B82∗) OR FIC = (B82∗) OR UCC = (977∗)) ANDALLD = (nano∗ OR quantum∗ OR Qdot OR Qubit OR atom∗OR probe OR epitax∗OR fullerene∗OR thin ADJ wire∗OR thinADJ film∗ OR buckyball∗ OR scanning ADJ microscope∗ ORtunneling ADJ microscope∗ OR scanning ADJ electron∗ ORbionano∗ OR bionano∗ OR gCNT∗ OR Peapod∗ OR CSCNT∗OR CNT∗ OR g-CNT∗ OR colloidal ADJ crystal∗).

As a result 49 544 individual nanotechnology patents wereobtained for the period from 1970 to 2012. The obtained resultswere imported into the TDA and, to validate results further, theduplicate results were eliminated and variations of company, in-ventor, institutes, and university names were unified where theyappeared as separate patent assignees. After the data set was pre-pared, various functions were utilized using the same tool TDAto generate the required analysis. There are many other relation-ships that can be captured and visualized with TDA software.TDA software allows the analysis of patent data and their visual-ization in many ways, such as mapping, clustering, and citationnetworks. TDA software will be used to analyze the collabo-ration level of organizations in terms of patenting activity, thelinkages of organizations within/outside of their establishment


TABLE IINUMBER OF COLLABORATIONS BETWEEN ORGANIZATIONS

Fig. 3. Nanotechnology patents per Year.

in whichever country they operate, their collaboration with otheractors within the nanotechnology innovation system (universi-ties, institutes, and corporations) and the technology diffusionprocess following the linkages between various academic andnonacademic organizations.

IV. FINDINGS

A. Nanotechnology Patent Development Trends

A general overview and technology development trends ofnanotechnology is illustrated in this section with regard to thenumber of patents and its linkages to organizations and inven-tors. In general, the progress of nanotechnology patenting ac-tivity appears to be very promising for commercial activities.There are 73 096 inventors, 29 884 organizations, and 68 coun-tries involved in nanotechnology patenting activity. There are49 543 patented inventions, of which 29 217 are owned by cor-porations, 10 787 by academic organizations (universities andother institutions), 14 164 by inventors, and 1887 by govern-ments. The total number is higher than the actual patent numberbecause there are a number of shared patents among differentorganizations (see Table II). There are 1784 patents that areshared by corporate and academic organizations.

As shown in Fig. 3, the peak period appears to be between2001 and 2009, which accounts for almost 70% of overall nan-otechnology patents (all the patenting activity for 2010 and 2011cannot be presented as not all the patents have yet been granted).There are three different stages that can be highlighted from thepatent activity in the nanotechnology field. The first of theseis the stage where the nanotechnology patents started with thepatents that focused on the research and development of the

TABLE IIINUMBER OF NANOTECHNOLOGY RECORDS PER COUNTRY

nanotechnology field. In the development stage, there was nota notably rapid increase. In the growth stage, the rapid increasein the number of patents appeared and in this stage the area ofnanotechnology expanded with the addition of various nanoma-terials. In the stage that is called the peak point, nanotechnologypatenting activity was at its highest level, and at this stage thevarious products and supplements were introduced in the nan-otechnology field.

The significant growth in the number of granted patents mayindicate the fact that nanotechnology is close to the commercial-ization stage, as many other technologies such as biotechnologyhad a peak point before becoming commercialized. Since thetechnology diffusion period of many technologies is becomingprogressively shorter due to strong networks, systematic ap-proaches, and developed information and communication tech-nologies, the increased number of nanopatents may lead to thecommercialization stage in the near future. Additionally, theavailability of almost 50 000 granted nanopatents within themaximum patent grant period of 20 years suggests that thehighly commercialized era of nanotechnology is imminent.

B. Emerging Actors in Nanotechnology

Looking at patenting activity at a national level (see Table III),the U.S., with 41.6% of the overall patents, is still the leadingcountry in the nanotechnology field. However, it appears thatAsian players (Japan 29.3%, Korea 9.2%, and China 7.7%) arecatching up and the Asian region has the highest number ofpatents in total. The increasing importance of Korea and Chinaas players in the nanotechnology field can be considered as athreat for the U.S. and Japan. In the EU region, Germany, France,and the U.K. play the key role in nanotechnology patentingactivity but they are far behind the Asian players and the U.S.With regard to the above analysis of the number of patent recordsper country, it seems that nanopatenting activity did not spreadto other EU countries and the growth rate of the EU numberof patents is very slow. Russia and Taiwan emerge as beingimportant regions for nanotechnology. It can be said that therewas a significant increase in the number of Chinese patents in2001, though one reason why China did well as a country isbecause the inventor Y. Mengjun was granted 908 patents thatyear (see Fig. 4).


Fig. 4. Nanotechnology patents by country.

Having examined changing country profiles for nanotechnol-ogy in general, it would be useful to look into the details ofeach country at such things as where their national competitivestrength derives from within the nanotechnology field and whoare the country specific dominant players. Looking at Table IV,it can be seen that almost every country appears to have at leastone strong technology domain that is not a highly competitivepoint for another country. If the number of technology termsis considered per country, the U.S. appears to have the high-est involvement in nanotechnology polymer technology (1959patents) and U.S. is the only country that contains nanotech-nology patents that are related to natural/genetically engineeredproduct polymers within the top three nanotechnology terms.

The top organization for the U.S. appears to be the multina-tional Korean-based company, Samsung. This indicates Sam-sung’s huge involvement within both the U.S. and Korea as it isthe top organization in both countries. Accordingly, Samsung’sprogress may be the reason for the advance of Korea in this fieldwith a 24% rise in the number of nanotechnology patents withinthe last 3 years and it may be a key factor in the U.S.’s contin-ued leading position as 12% patent documents within 3 yearswere filed by U.S. This is noteworthy when considering the to-tal number of nanotechnology patents owned. Japan’s leadingnanotechnology related field is semiconductor laser technologyand NEC appears to be the dominant player in Japan with 681patent documents. Another key nanotechnology patenting areafor Japan is carbon nanotube technology. Carbon nanotubes arenanostructures that have a great use in various fields in differ-ent forms and Japan can gain great benefit from this area onceit is commercialized if they can maintain their leading posi-tion. China emerges as having a great position in last 3 yearsas they present the greatest growth with 40% and they are thenewest nanotechnology player compared to other top countries.For China, the dominant organization appears to be Hon HaiPrecision (Foxconn), the Taiwanese-based global manufacturerand the largest exporter in China. China seems to be leadingthe applications of nanotechnology on natural products, whichis due to the huge amount of granted patents to the Chineseinventor, Y. Mengjun. In general, it can be accepted that the

presented Table IV only shows the top three technology termsso another country may still have a dominance in that particularpatent field.

Having mentioned the key technologies for each country, thetop subcategories of the nanotechnology field are analyzed tosee the number of patents which have been granted for each fieldby country. In general, the top technology terms for each coun-try can be identified, but Fig. 5 allows analysis of the top tentechnology patenting fields with regard to the number of patentdocuments that have been granted for leading countries in nan-otechnology. Even though Table IV above shows the strengthsof each country, it does not mean that those countries are theleading country for that subcategory. For example, E05-U03(Carbon nanotubes) is one of the most important patent categoryin the nanotechnology field and one in which France has highpatenting activity. However, the involvement of France in thisarea appears to be considerably behind other countries, as only66 patents were granted in France while Japan had the largestnumber of patent documents in the nanotube field with 1308patents being granted. Also, the U.S. has granted 663 patentsin nanotube technology, which makes it their 10th strongestpatenting field and puts the U.S. in second position in overallshare of global nanotube patents.

The novelty of this analysis is that it presents all the dom-inant countries in a specific technology field and at the sametime, the weaknesses of countries in their patenting activity ina specific technology. For example, the U.S. is very dominantin general processes and apparatuses for nanotechnology (B11-C12). These patents are essential for many kinds of researchbecause these are the patent documents that contain the corenotions of research in nanotechnology. These patents can be anobstacle for some countries in getting involved in some of nan-otechnology fields. On the other hand, it is possible to identifythe weak players in a specific technology. For example, eventhough China is the fourth leading country in the nanotech-nology field, their involvement in V08-A04 A (semiconductorlaser technology) is considerably less than other countries inthe nanotechnology field, as only 6 patents have been grantedin this field. The dominant player in nanosemiconductor-lasertechnology is Japan (2001 granted patents), which has almost50% of global patents for this specific field.

The considerable differences between countries are due todifferent interests of public and private organizations or due tothe availability of sufficient funds for that specific field. Forexample, the reason why Japan is far ahead in semiconductorlaser technology compared to other countries is because of thehigh interest and investment of Japanese companies in this field.The companies involved include ones such as NEC, Fujitsu, Hi-tachi, Toshiba, Mitsubishi Electric, and NTT. This technologyis applied in many different fields including network devices,printers, and sensors. As semiconductor laser technology hasmany issues with regard to its applications at room temperature,there are some obstacles to overcome before it can be success-fully used. However, it is possible to overcome these issueswith the application of nanotechnology together with semicon-ductor lasers. Considering the huge interest of NEC in termsof their current technology focus, they are motivated to invest


TABLE IVNANOTECHNOLOGY ACTORS’ PROFILE

in semiconductor nanotechnology lasers, thus Japan appears asthe leading country in this field. Also, Japanese academic or-ganizations such as Dokuritsu Gyosei Hojin Sangyo Gijutsu(National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Tech-nology) receive a lot of support from government and privateorganizations to enable them to focus on this type of research.The huge involvement of Japanese academic actors in this fieldis not only due to the large investment but it is also due to the

interest of inventors in fundamental research in semiconductortechnology, an interest which started in 1980. This will be fur-ther illustrated in the next section, which specifically looks atnanotechnology patenting activity by organizations.

C. Profile of Top Actors—Collaborative Networks

The leading organizations in the nanotechnology field areSamsung, NEC, Fujitsu, Hon Han Precision (Foxconn), and


Fig. 5. Nanotechnological fields by country focus.

TABLE VNANOTECHNOLOGY PATENTS BY ORGANIZATIONS

IBM (see Table V). The top five companies’ contribution isalmost 10%. Samsung’s granted patents are almost two timeshigher than their closest competitor. It is noteworthy that someinstitutes and universities are key players with regard to thenumber of nanotechnology patents, including the Universityof California (549) and Japan Science and Technology (551).The high engagement of public research organizations in thepatenting activity is essential for nanotechnology field to moveinto the commercialized stage as the most of granted patents

are provided to the spin-offs, SMEs or large companies to beused in their respected industry and this assists the technologydiffusion process.

By looking into the details of each organization’s profile, theanswers to some important questions can be captured (see Ta-ble VI). These are how long these top companies have beeninvolved in nanotechnology, how active they are and what theirtechnology foci are. One surprising fact to emerge is that Sam-sung is one of the latest movers into the field compared to othertop companies, as they were granted their first patent in 1995and yet are still the holders of the highest number of patents innanotechnology with 1258 patents. Moreover, it can be assumedthat Samsung is still highly active in the nanotechnology field be-cause 14% of their patents have been granted in the last 3 years.Samsung’s top nanotechnology activity falls in semiconductortechnology and polymer applications. The second highest num-ber of patents is held by NEC, with 689 patents granted. Theirfirst nanotechnology related patent was granted in 1983, whichmakes them one of the oldest companies in this field. Theirpatenting activity level is slightly lower than Samsung’s as 5%of their patents have been in the last 3 years. They are one ofthe foremost companies in semiconductor laser technology with258 patents that account for 37.4% of their overall patents andalmost 10% of global semiconductor laser technology patents,which comprises 2664 patents in total. Other patents that NEChas are highly related to the semiconductor laser technology.


TABLE VITOP ACTORS IN NANOTECHNOLOGY COLLABORATIVE NETWORKS

Hon Hai Precision (Foxconn) is the fastest developing or-ganization in the nanotechnology field. Hon Hai Precision hasbeen granted 657 nanotechnology patents in only 9 years start-ing from 2002. Their technological competence within the nan-otechnology field is related to carbon nanotubes and conductivematerials. Most importantly, their rapid development continuesas they have been granted 26% of their overall patents within the

last 3 years and this company is expected to become the leaderin the nanotechnology field within 5–10 years if they continueto invest in this field and be granted patents at a similar rate.Their success factors will be analyzed in the following section,when collaboration networks for patent activity are analyzed.

If the top organizations collaborative networks are examined,it would be possible to see which inventors and organizations are


TABLE VIIPROFILE OF SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS

key players in terms of collaborative networks. In the followinganalysis, the collaboration of top organizations will be looked atin detail. For this analysis, Samsung, NEC, and Foxconn werechosen due to the fact they are the top organizations in differ-ent regions and there are differences when their interlinkageswith other actors are looked at. IBM was not chosen for thisanalysis because it was found that IBM mostly relies on its ownresearch capabilities and its coowned patents mostly appear tobe at inventor level. Table VII shows the top three collabora-tors with Samsung in descending order of number of patentsunder coownership. All of Samsung’s collaborations appear tohave been with South Korean Universities. If the percentage ofshared patent records is examined for the last 3 year period,the increasing importance of collaborations between academicand corporate organizations can be seen, as most collaborationhave taken place in this period. Almost 50% of Sungkyunkwannanotechnology patents appear to be coowned with Samsungand this again proves the strong linkages between academic andprivate organizations in South Korea.

Looking at the collaborations of another leading organiza-tion, NEC (see Table VIII), the top three collaborations appearto be with academic organizations. Like Samsung’s interlink-ages with Korean academic organizations, NEC has a similarnumber of patent coownerships with Japanese ones. However,there has been a dramatic decline in such collaborations be-tween NEC and Japanese institutions over the last 3 years. Thismay be why South Korea is catching up with Japan in terms ofnumber of nanotechnology patents. To increase the efficiencyof patenting activity, private organizations may need to investin academic organizations and government may need to en-courage this situation such as by introducing special incentivesto link private and public organization. Looking at the top in-ventors, S. Iijima can be identified as one of the key inventorsin the Japanese nanotechnology innovation system. S. Iijimais a Japanese physicist sometimes referred to as the inventorof carbon nanotubes. He has been granted 100 nanotechnologypatents. He joined NEC in 1987 as a Senior Principal Researcherand is also the Research Director of Japan Science and Technol-ogy Agency. Therefore, S. Iijima is one of the key inventors whohas strengthened the bond between academic and private orga-nizations in Japan, which has significantly assisted the diffusionprocess in the nanotechnology field.

In Table IX, the top three collaborators with Foxconn areshown. The greatest collaboration in the world between twoorganizations in the nanotechnology field is between Foxconnand Tsinghua University, with the highest number of sharedpatents. In fact, in an interview, the Director of Tsinghua–Foxconn Nanotechnology Research Centre stated the two or-ganizations have agreed to share all of their nanotechnologypatents. Accordingly, not only Foxconn but Foxconn’s umbrellaorganizations collaborate with Tsinghua University to inventand innovate new technologies. Fukui Precision Components inShenzhen is the China-based Umbrella Company of Foxconn.They focus on printed circuit board products and of course thereare shared nanotechnology patents with Tsinghua University asthere are many crucial nanotechnology patents in circuit printingtechnology that both organizations have. The second most im-portant collaboration of Foxconn is with Beijing Funate Innova-tion Technology, which is based in the Tsinghua Science Park,Beijing. The coownership between the two organizations ap-pears due to two key nanotechnology inventors in China, F. S.Shan and J. K. Li, as they coown patents that Tsinghua Uni-versity, Beijing Funate Innovation Technology and Foxconn arepermitted to use.

D. Organizational Networks in Nanotechnology

After analyzing the key technology fields within nanotech-nology that organizations are working on, the organizationalclusters are analyzed to identify their patent generation system.The network between organizations in the nanotechnology fieldwith regard to shared and collaborative patents is shown be-low in Fig. 6. With regard to these interactions, it is possibleto capture the collaboration level of organizations in terms ofpatenting activity, the linkages of organizations within/outsidetheir establishment in whichever country they operate, their col-laboration with other actors within the nanotechnology innova-tion system (universities, institutes, and corporations) and thetechnology diffusion process following the linkages betweenvarious organizations. After analyzing the networks of the top250 nanotechnology organizations (see Fig. 6), the strongestlinkage was found between Hon Hai Precision (known as Fox-conn) and Qinghua University (known as Tsinghua University).Foxconn is a multinational electronics manufacturing company


TABLE VIIIPROFILE OF NEC

TABLE IXPROFILE OF FOXCONN

headquartered in Taiwan and the largest exporter in GreaterChina. Tsinghua University is located in Beijing, China, andis one of the universities most dedicated to research in nan-otechnology field. These two large organizations established theTsinghua–Foxconn Nanotechnology Research Centre in 2003.Foxconn group invested 300M RMB (US$ ∼44 million) whileTsinghua University provided land of 13 000 square meters.They plan to establish an international advanced Nanotechnol-ogy research base, taking advantage of Tsinghua University’ssciences and research talent and Foxconn Group’s experiencein industrialization. They will do research on basic and appliednanotechnology, to create new technologies and provide impe-tus to the commercialization of nanotechnology activities. Since2003, these two organizations have been granted 417 patentsrelated to the nanotechnology field within 8 years and thisis the highest number of patents that are shared betweentwo organizations in this area (see Table X). These organiza-tions have mainly focused on the applications of nanotech-nology in the electronics industry and one of their areas ofexpertise is carbon nanotubes. There is no other organiza-tion that shares any patents with either Foxconn or TsinghuaUniversity.

The second strongest bond between two organizations con-sidering the ratio between number of patents held by the in-dividual organizations and the patents that have been grantedcollaboratively is between Samsung and Sungkyunkwan Uni-versity of Korea, as they share 37 patents within the nanotech-nology field. Sungkyunkwan University holds 111 patents intotal in the nanotechnology field so they share 33% of theirpatents in this area with Samsung. Sungkyunkwan AdvancedInstitute of Nano Technology (SAINT) was established in 2005as one of the core programs of Sungkyunkwan University with

financial support from Samsung Advanced Institute of Tech-nology (SAIT). The goal of SAINT is to become one of thetop five nanotechnology-related institutes. The relationship be-tween Samsung and Sungkyunkwan University is similar to thatof Foxconn and Tsinghua University, but the Korean players aremore open to other organizations, as they also collaborate withother organizations in this field.

Having mentioned the strongest linkages between the keyplayers in this field, the research clusters were looked at to seewhich countries have strong linkages within/outside the centerof their operations. As shown in the Fig. 6, U.S., Korean, andJapanese actors present significant linkages within their own re-gions. If these regional nanotechnology innovation systems arecompared, it can be said that the Japanese innovation system(please see cluster 2) appears to have the strongest and highestnumber of linkages between organizations. Moreover, some ofthe key players in Japan collaborate only within their nationalinnovation system. Another strong nanotechnology innovationsystem is in the Korean region (please see the cluster 1). Eventhough the Korean players became involved in nanotechnologylong after other national players, the Korean innovation sys-tem has a strong cluster and emerges as one of the strongest.Similar to the Japanese nanotechnology cluster, most of theirlinkages are within their own national innovation system, whichappears to be highly centralized around the key Korean player,Samsung. A different characteristic can be found within a dif-ferent research cluster that embraces U.S. and French-basedorganizations (please see cluster 4). This is the only nanotech-nology research cluster that has strong relationships with regardto patenting activity at the international level. Some of the U.S.and French research institutes and universities collaborate witheach other such as the collaboration between the California


Fig. 6. Organizational networks and clusters in nanotechnology.

Institute of Technology (USA) and the Centre National de laRecherche Scientifique, CNRS (France). However, it is inter-esting that there are not many strong linkages between Frenchand U.S. organizations when cross-country academic and cor-porations’ patenting activity is considered. In this cluster, itappears that there is no central player but the linkage betweenCNRS, Commissariat Energie Atomique, and Arkema is strongin France. The linkage between Motorola and Free scale Semi-

conductors is strong in the U.S. Even though this cluster is theonly cluster with the characteristics of a strong internationallinkage, it seems that key patenting activity still remains withintheir respective national boundaries.

V. IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUDING REMARKS

The analysis of nanotechnology patenting activity pre-sented here shows recent trends in the nanotechnology field.


TABLE XCOLLABORATIONS OF ORGANIZATIONS IN NANOTECHNOLOGY

Accordingly, it was noticed that there was an extensive amountof patenting between 2001 and 2009. Patenting activity wasanalyzed with three different foci, being international, organi-zational, and technological. International profiles provided use-ful details such as a changed overview of the nanotechnologyfield because previous research in this field presented patent data

whereby the U.S. and Japan were far ahead of all other countries,but this new patent data analysis shows that Korea, China, Rus-sia, and Taiwan are possible top ranking countries for nanotech-nology. Moreover, this research has presented country-basedkey technology domains and dominant players within thosecountries. Organizational profiles of the nanotechnology field


presented the leading academic and nonacademic organizationsand the results are very different to those of other studies thathave been conducted in this field. Such companies as IBM,NEC, and Fujitsu are leading corporations but Asian-basedcompanies’ involvement has turned out to be very successfulas Samsung has become the leading organization and Hon HaiPrecision took the fourth place in the nanotechnology field. Thefindings scrutinized the top actors’ profile and their collaborativenetworks worldwide, where Asian players show their noticeablerole.

This research offers an innovative look at various relation-ships within nanotechnology with mapping, clustering, and techmining methods to gather various determinants to understandthis field better. The analysis of the nanotechnology-patentingnetwork presented novel results. It presented different clustersat national and international level; how these clusters are linkedand how academic and nonacademic organizations are linkedto each other. Some nations such as Korea and Japan presentedhighly collaborative clusters. The U.S. also had a collaborativecluster but two dissimilarities in comparison with other nations.First, they had a higher level of international collaborations,for example, with France, Korea, Taiwan, China, and Japan;and second, the academic institutions appear to have a strongerrelationship among each other. China presented a great illustra-tion of an effective collaboration in patenting activity and coin-ventorship between academic and corporative organizations. Itwas found that the strongest linkage is between Hon Hai Pre-cision (known as Foxconn) and Qinghua University (knownas Tsinghua University), which were supported by their estab-lishment of the Tsinghua–Foxconn Nanotechnology ResearchCentre. The findings show that several Korean, Japanese, andChinese companies belong to the largest commercial playersin the nanotechnology Technology pole of the global socioeco-nomic network. Therefore, it would be useful to adopt strategiesthat could facilitate in building a network platform for sharingor exchanging nanoexpertise, key technologies, and nanoinfor-mation across the region.

This paper contributes to patents analysis within nanotechnol-ogy with a different search term approach, which was differentto other studies in this field. TDA or VantagePoint software isa common tool that has been used by other researchers to ana-lyze patent data but some of the gathered analysis here has notbeen presented by other researchers before, as this study used adifferent approach regarding the TDA software. Moreover, thisstudy has covered 49 544 patents within the nanotechnologyfield using Themescape and TDA, which makes it more validand reliable than comparable studies. Within systems of inno-vation, identifying emerging actors including the analysis ofcollaborative networks and organizational clusters have proveda worthy contribution to enrich the technology and the innova-tion management literature.

With regards to the TEN model, networks and clusters withinnanotechnology innovation system showed that boundaries ofinteractions are not limited to the national level and also thereare interactions between different types of organizations so it isnot possible to limit this field into certain sector either. However,

it is identified that there is a great weakness within nanotech-nology innovation system that the linkage between S–T poleand Market pole is not strong enough in terms of patentingactivities. There were some strong linkages, such as betweenFoxconn–Tsinghua but these types of collaborations were sorare in overall. The weakness in collaboration between the Sci-ence, Technology, and Market poles may be why the nanotech-nology field is not in its highly commercialized stage. Differ-ent types of linkages are found within the nanotechnology in-novation system, for example, centralized linkages are foundwith dominant players such as Samsung in the South Koreancase, while relatively highly distributed linkages are found inJapan and linear linkages are found in China. The strength oflinkages depends on the types of organization, their involvementin the collaboration system, and the region where they are found.Strengthening the linkages between scientific and corporate ac-tors may eliminate many barriers and accelerate the diffusionof nanotechnology in commercial and scientific fields. The re-search is particularly useful for forming technological strategiesand science and technology policies, revealing the strengths andweaknesses of the emerging actors in nanotechnological sys-tems. The focus of nanoscience and technology development(S–T pole) corresponds to the importance of these areas in thecommercial domain (Market pole).

The implication of this study is that patent analysis providesa great tool that enables active and potential participants in thisfield to gain from:

1) Knowledge of nanotechnology patent changing trends atcountry and organizational level, e.g., the changing role ofAsian countries and the increasing importance of Koreanorganizations.

2) Evaluation of the competition and core competences ofnanotechnology organizations and countries.

3) Analyses of national and international patent sources andcollaboration of various organizations that present stronglinkages and the dominant players within this field.

4) The linkages between national innovation systems at theinternational level that presents which companies collab-orate with each other and which organizations play a keyrole in this aspect.

The limitations and gaps of existing studies in the emergingnanotechnology field led to the initial idea of a more comprehen-sive analysis on nanotechnology actors and their collaborativenetworks that have so far been accomplished in this paper. Thereare many other relationships that can be looked at with nanotech-nology patent analysis. Future studies could look at differenttechnology domains and their relationships with each other atthe country level and international level. This quantitative studycould be taken to a qualitative level by analyzing the technologyclaims and abstracts of each patent to see how a specific sub-nanotechnology category linked with industry. Interviews andsurveys collected from academic and nonacademic organiza-tions could be used to gain a more in-depth understanding ofthe topic. It is expected that more knowledge about understand-ing nanotechnological systems can be obtained through furtherresearch in order to increase its robustness.


ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The authors would like to thank C. Tucci for his valuableeditorial guidance and two anonymous reviewers for their ex-cellent suggestions. The authors are grateful to Prof. F. Phillips,Prof. P. Shapira and Prof. S. Cunningham for their commentson the previous version of this paper which was presented at“The International Conference on Innovative Methods for In-novation Management and Policy (IM2012),” held in Beijing,May 2012. The authors wish to express their gratitude for the fi-nancial support given by the Glyn Rowlands Foundation and theAberystwyth University Research Fund. The usual disclaimerapplies.

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Nazrul Islam received the D.Eng. degree in innova-tion management from the Graduate School of Inno-vation Management, Tokyo Institute of Technology,Tokyo, Japan, in 2008.

He is currently a Program Leader for Postgradu-ate Research and a Lecturer in innovation and oper-ations management at Aberystwyth University Busi-ness School. He has held faculty positions at CardiffUniversity, Middlesex University, Tokyo Institute ofTechnology, North South University, and Dhaka Uni-versity. His research interests include management of

emerging and disruptive technology innovation; national and technological in-novation systems focusing on nano- and biotechnology; studies of R&D collab-orations; the development of science and technology indicators; and technologytransfer. He has authored more than 30 scholarly research papers including sev-eral books on the topic and his research have been published in the Technovation,the Technological Forecasting and Social Change, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EN-GINEERING MANAGEMENT, and the Science and Public Policy. He authored andedited books in the areas of disruptive and nanotechnology innovation.

Dr. Islam’s publications have received academic awards including the “Pratt& Whitney Canada: Best Paper Award” from Ottawa, Canada. He serves as anexpert referee for the UK research councils (EPSRC) and for many internationaljournals. He serves as an Editorial Board Member of Open Journal of Businessand Management. He is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy, U.K., amember of the International Association of Management of Technology, and amember of the International Society for Professional Innovation Management.

Sercan Ozcan received the Dipl. degree (Hons.) from the National TechnicalUniversity of Ukraine “KPI”, Kiev, Ukraine, and the M.Sc. Management degreein marketing from Bournemouth University, Bournemouth, U.K. He is currentlyworking toward the Ph.D. degree in innovation management at AberystwythUniversity, Aberystwyth, Wales, U.K.

His research interests include patent analysis, data mining techniques, sys-tems of innovation, and collaborative network models focusing on nanotechnol-ogy field.

Mr. Ozcan has been awarded for the Rowland’s Foundation Ph.D. scholarshipat Aberystwyth University. He was rewarded with two different scholarships TheDean’s Prestige scholarship and International Scholarship at Bournemouth Uni-versity. He is a qualified Electronics and Telecommunication Engineer.

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