| Disruptive technology has profoundly affected the market environment and business patterns.Traditional and emerging industries are willing to adopt it to nurture their innovation activities and achieve competitive advantage.Since Christensen proposed the theory of disruptive innovation in 1995,there has been a gradual shift in the mindset of the corporate world,where age and size of a company are no longer advantages.Stories of the rapid decline of some prominent benchmark companies have brought warnings that in today’s rapidly changing digital landscape,it is critical to discern whether a technology is disruptive;ignoring a potentially disruptive innovation can be disastrous,while adopting a disruptive technology innovation can be a powerful medicine.However,disruptive technologies are highly uncertain and ambiguous,and even top corporate executives are not sure what a disruptive innovation actually is.Disruptive technology innovations emerge and then undergo a period of diffusion before they have a disruptive impact in the technology field and market.Therefore,it is of practical importance to monitor the process of technology evolution from the perspective of technology innovation diffusion and to anticipate the possible impact of disruptive technologies.Based on the theory of disruptive technology innovation and technology diffusion theory,this paper proposes a set of systematic and feasible research from the perspective of complex networks,with the main line of ’scale-free characteristics analysis of disruptive technology network →diffusion mechanism of disruptive technology innovation → development path of disruptive technology diffusion → antecedent analysis of disruptive technology diffusion’.The research methodology of disruptive technology diffusion mechanism is proposed.It mainly includes the following four parts.(1)This paper analyzes the complexity of the diffusion of disruptive technology innovation.The concept of disruptive technology innovation diffusion is defined in terms of disruptive and diffusion from a dynamic perspective,the intrinsic and extrinsic drivers of disruptive technology innovation diffusion are analyzed,and the characteristics of disruptive technology innovation diffusion are explored from a complex network perspective.According to the technology life cycle,the disruptive technology innovation diffusion is divided into four stages: emergence,explosion,fission and maturity,and the two diffusion modes of performance leap and cross-domain integration of disruptive technology innovation diffusion are analyzed,as well as the emergence of technology disruption.A quantitative approach targeting specific patented technologies from a complex network perspective is proposed to measure the diffusion of disruptive technology innovations.(2)This paper analyses the characteristics and diffusion mechanism of disruptive technology innovation based on the characteristics of patent citation networks.The direct citation network construction method is chosen to search all patents in the field of disruptive technologies and build a network through the citation relationship between patents.On this basis,the main paths of the patent citation network in the disruptive technology field are extracted and the evolutionary trends of technology diffusion are analysed.Using disruptive technology innovation theory to analyse in depth the changes in the characteristics of the degree distribution of the technology domain,and by examining the scale-free characteristics of the degree distribution of the network over time,the characteristics of the diffusion of disruptive technology innovation are then analysed to determine the timing of technological disruption.Using the generation mechanism of complex networks as a guide,the evolution mechanism of the diffusion of disruptive technology innovations is explored in depth.On this basis,the development path of disruptive technological innovation diffusion is analysed and the patterns of disruptive technological innovation diffusion are analysed.(3)Based on network embeddedness theory and resource-based theory,this paper proposes the mechanisms of the influence of cooperative network centrality and cooperative network structural holes on the diffusion of disruptive technological innovations.Based on the analysed performance leapfrog and cross-domain integration models of disruptive technology innovation diffusion,this paper introduces inventor experience and novelty as moderating variables to propose the moderating influence mechanism of cooperative network embedding on disruptive technology innovation diffusion.Based on network embeddedness theory and knowledge base theory,the influence mechanisms of knowledge network centrality and knowledge network structural holes on the diffusion of disruptive technology innovation are proposed,and it is suggested that inventor experience and novelty are important weighting factors in the relationship between knowledge network embeddedness and the diffusion of disruptive technology innovation.(4)This paper selects radio frequency identification(RFID)technology and uses patent data from the United States Patent and Trademark Office(USPTO)database to carry out empirical analysis of the proposed theoretical approach.The citation relationship,inventor cooperation relationship and co-occurrence relationship of IPC international patent classification numbers in the patent literature are extracted to construct the patent citation network,inventor cooperation network and knowledge network of RFID technology respectively.On this basis,Pajek software was used to calculate the structural characteristics of the networks,extract the main paths,and programmed in Python to verify whether the degree distribution of patent citation networks at different times has scale-free characteristics and to calculate the diffusion value of disruptive technology innovations for each patent.Stata software was used to empirically analyse the data and to test the proposed hypotheses.The results show that the scale-free characteristics of the network degree distribution in the disruptive technology domain change over time.In the field of RFID technology,the network first took on a scale-free character in 2003 with the rapid development of the technology,but by 2008 and 2009 this preferential connectivity mechanism was disrupted and a technological disruption occurred.Since then,the network has regained its scale-free character,i.e.the polarisation of the rich getting richer.In addition,both cooperative network centrality and knowledge network centrality have a negative effect on the diffusion of disruptive technological innovations;both cooperative network structural holes and knowledge network structural holes have a positive effect on the diffusion of disruptive technological innovations;inventor experience has a moderating role in the effect of cooperative network embedding on the diffusion of disruptive technological innovations,but novelty in the effect of cooperative network centrality on the diffusion of disruptive technological innovations The moderating role of novelty in the effect of cooperative network centrality on the diffusion of disruptive technological innovations was only verified during the fission phase,and the moderating role of novelty in the effect of cooperative network structural holes on the diffusion of disruptive technological innovations was only verified during the burst phase.The moderating role of inventor experience and novelty in the effect of knowledge network embedding on the diffusion of disruptive technology innovation was verified only in the fission phase,and the moderating role of novelty in the effect of cooperative network structural holes on the diffusion of disruptive technology innovation was verified only in the explosion phase.Inventor experience and novelty have a moderating role in the impact of knowledge network embedding on the diffusion of disruptive technology innovations.In summary,this paper presents the characteristics of disruptive technology innovation diffusion from the perspective of complex networks,explains the inner law and evolution diffusion mechanism of disruptive technology innovation diffusion,and reveals the influence mechanism of network embedding on disruptive technology innovation diffusion.The main innovation points are shown in the following aspects.(1)Integrating disruptive technological innovation and technological innovation diffusion into the same framework,and digging deeper into the connotation,characteristics and motives of disruptive technological innovation diffusion from the perspective of complex networks.This study uses maximum likelihood estimation to verify the scale-free characteristics of the degree distribution of the time-phased patent citation network in view of the complexity of the diffusion of disruptive technology innovations.This study explains the phenomenon of technological disruption in the diffusion of disruptive technology innovations,expands the understanding of the characteristics of the diffusion of disruptive technology innovations and the diffusion process of disruptive technology innovations,and provides an important theoretical basis for the study of the diffusion mechanism of disruptive technology innovations.(2)Based on the generation mechanism of complex networks,the diffusion mechanism of disruptive technological innovations is analyzed in depth from the perspective of the diffusion process.This paper discusses a new method for identifying the emergence of disruptive technologies in the field of disruptive technologies and analyses the evolution mechanism of technological innovation diffusion in the field of disruptive technologies.By analysing the scale-free characteristics of the distribution of technology network degrees over time,the mechanism of technology innovation diffusion is explained from the perspective of disruptive technology innovation based on a complex network generation mechanism,and the timing of the emergence of technology disruptions is identified based on changes in the diffusion mechanism of disruptive technology innovation.(3)A complex network approach is used to measure the diffusion of disruptive technology innovations and apply it to an empirical study.This paper adopts a quantitative approach to describe the diffusion of disruptive technology innovation,which is dynamic in nature.Based on the collected RFID patent data,this paper measures the extent of the diffusion of disruptive technology innovation among the patented technologies and applies it to an empirical study,providing a new perspective on the quantitative study of the diffusion of disruptive technology innovation.(4)Enriching the antecedent variables of disruptive technology innovation diffusion in terms of cooperative network embedding and knowledge network embedding.This paper decouples cooperation networks and knowledge networks,and explores the antecedent variables of disruptive technology innovation diffusion based on the viewpoint of network embedding.It enriches the theoretical foundations of cooperation network and knowledge network embedding and provides a direction to reveal the impact mechanism of the diffusion of disruptive technological innovation.Based on the performance-leap diffusion and cross-domain integration diffusion in the diffusion model of disruptive technology innovation,the combination of inventor experience and novelty is incorporated into the research framework to verify the moderating influence mechanism of cooperation networks and knowledge network embedding on the diffusion of disruptive technology innovation,and to test the differences of this influence mechanism in different periods of disruptive technology innovation diffusion. |
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