SAO analysis as a tool for identifying partner in open model: An Application in the DSSCs sector

This paper aims to show how the information contained in research documents can be used to identify a technological partner for open innovation process. More generally, the aim is to highlight the role that the SAO analyses can play in identifying R&D partners in open perspective. In the existing literature, a SAO analysis is often considered as a tool for forecasting technological trends. In this research, we overturn this approach considering SAO analysis as a tool for recognizing (a) partner(s) for open innovation management. In doing so, the method, based on SAO analysis, is proposed. Concretely, the originality of this approach consists in first, to build a SAO structure map that illustrates the key technologies and research challenges and second, the key organizations (firms or research institutes) with similar technologies as well the relations between them in order to encourage the open model. The exploratory study is on DSSCs sector.