A Function-Based Knowledge Base for Technology Intelligence

The development of a practical technology intelligence system requires a knowledge base that structures the core information and its relationship distilled from large volumes of technical data. Previous studies have mainly focused on the methodological approaches for technology opportunities, while little attention has been paid to constructing a practical knowledge base. Therefore, this study proposes a procedure to construct a function-based knowledge base for technology intelligence. We define the product-function-technology relationship and subsequently present the detailed steps for the knowledge base construction. The knowledge base, which is constructed analyzing 1110582 patents between 2009 and 2013 from the United States Patent and Trademark Office database, contains the functional knowledge of products and technologies and the relationship between products and technologies. This study is the first attempt to develop a large-scale knowledge base using the concept of function and has the ability to serve as a basis not only for furthering technology opportunity analysis methods but also for developing practical technology intelligence systems.