Identification Of Technological Convergence And Effect Of Technological Convergence On Innovation Performance

Given the rapid development of social economy,Single technology is not enough to solve complex socio-economic problems,technological convergence has attracted worldwide attention.Technological convergence,which refers to the combination of two or more technological elements in order to create a new system with new functions,is a major source of technological innovation,leading and dominating next-generation technological innovation.Many current frontier science and emerging technologies are the result of technological convergence.Under the current situation,technological convergence is a fundamental way of the socio-economic development.Exploring the research of technological convergence is of great significance,however,the attention of domestic and international scholars is not enough.Therefore,via patentometric,social network analysis,burst detection algorithm and econometric models,this paper discusses technological convergence from the following two aspects.Firstly,this paper has identified the landscape of technological convergence in the field of solar energy,which is aim to identify the converging technologies and provide a justification for the technological convergence.Specifically,this paper has built the identification framework of technology convergence from three dimensions,which are the temporal distribution,structural distribution,hotspot and cutting-edge technologies capacities of technology convergence in the solar energy field.And then the thesis discusses the empirical research of technological convergence via patentometric,social network analysis and burst detection algorithm.The results showed that technological convergence in the field is becoming more active and the IPCs co-occurrence network of the solar energy field is in obvious expansion,by temporal evolution.Among all the types of technological convergence,the first and second places are taken by technological convergence from two and three heterogeneous technology domains,respectively,and technological convergence between more than three heterogeneous technology domains is relatively scarce."Mechanical engineering" and "electricity" are the hot-spot research of technological convergence in the field of solar energy.There are differences in hot technological capacities and cutting-edge technological capacities in the field of solar energy.Thus,government agencies at all levels and organizations should make technology development macro-policies and specific development strategies,improving the development of technological convergence.Secondly,this study investigated the effect of technological convergence on innovation performance,which is aim to provide implications on how to improve the outcome of an organization's research and development process.In addition to the direct effect of technological convergence,we addressed the moderating effects of technological knowledge maturity and technological knowledge flow.The empirical analysis,which employed a negative binomial regression model,used data on 2025 patents granted to Chinese organizations from USPTO patent database.The results showed that an increase in technological convergence has a positive and curvilinear relationship on innovation performance.Also,we found that the organization's technological knowledge maturity and technological knowledge flow negatively moderate the relationship between technological convergence and innovation performance.Specifically,when the degree of technological convergence is low,the more neoteric technological knowledge elements are used by the organization,the better the technology innovation will be;the organization can increase technology innovation by reducing the flow of technological knowledge with the outside world.In addition,when the degree of technological convergence is high,the more mature technological knowledge elements are used by the organization,the better the technology innovation will be;the organization increases the flow of technological knowledge with the outside world,which is benefit for technology innovation.The thesis can complement and complete the research of technological convergence to a certain extent,providing academic reference for future research of technological convergence.In addition,the empirical results of this paper can provide reference for the management practice of the government and the organizations,thereby promoting the development of technological convergence and realizing social and economic growth.