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| The Division of Brokerage Roles Using the Correlation of Patent Technology |
| Wang Yalan,Wang Chengjun,Sun Xiaoming,Xiang Rui,Feng Tao |
| (School of Management, Xi'an University of Architecture and Technology, Xi'an 710055,China) |
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Abstract Brokers that stand between unconnected alters have strong control and integration advantage in the inventor collaboration network. Because of the significant effect on promoting innovation, it has become one of the most concerned objects in the study of network management. The inventor collaboration network based on patent data is helpful to analyze the brokerage roles of each inventor, reveal the law of innovation collaboration among inventors, and guide the management of R&D talents in enterprises. A key step of brokerage analysis is the accurate division of boundary. The previous literature used to divide groups mostly based on network structure or given network boundary. Its advantage is simple operation and clear group boundary. However the corresponding deficiencies also exist. For example, the knowledge exchange environment and characteristics of inventors are ignored. Therefore, this group division method may not be reasonable while constructing inventor collaborative networks based on knowledge flow.
In view of that, this paper proposes a new method to divide the brokerage roles among enterprise inventors on the basis of patent data. It does not solely rely on network structure and not need to repeatedly determine the distinct group boundary. First, this paper takes the knowledge domain of inventors as the subgroup division standard, which conforms to the basic assumption of the division of brokerage roles. That is, the substantial connection relationship of inventors is undirected, and the group position of inventors should be mainly considered in the division. Secondly, this method increases the judgment accuracy of the inventor's knowledge domain, and reduces the difference between the group structure reflected only by data and the actual group structure. Finally, it improves the application category of the brokerage roles division method based on the patent data, and provides a complete division ideas and operation methods of brokerage roles at the individual level.
Specifically, based on the correlation of patent technology, this paper uses the IPC classification information in the patent description to determine the knowledge domain of the inventor in the enterprise, and then designs a set of algorithm to divide the inventors into mutually exclusive subgroups with the technological knowledge domain as the boundary, and finally makes efficient division and analysis of the role of brokerage. It conducts a case study of Cambrian Company. The Cambrian patent data were cleaned, and 125 valid patent description data and 34 inventors were obtained. Then the adjacency matrix of R & D personnel relationship is constructed. Finally, this paper took the inventor cooperation matrix and the technical group divided by the inventor according to the technical knowledge field as the grouping basis, and analyzed the role of brokerage. The case study demonstrates the accuracy and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.
In this paper, the designed division method of brokerage roles helps scholars to analyze the influence of different brokerage roles on knowledge integration and transfer. Firstly, the proposed algorithm reveals the effect of multiple brokerage roles of the inventors and the mechanism of brokerage roles transition (local and global roles of brokerage). Secondly, it also conduces to study cross-hierarchical brokerage roles, such as how lower-level brokerage roles influence higher-level, including influence direction, intensity and results. Thirdly, it is conducive to enriching the research of brokerage behavior at the individual level, such as the influence of brokerage status on brokerage roles, and the analysis of relationship between brokerage roles intentions and abilities from the perspective of self-monitoring. Finally, it can help scholars to investigate the moderating effects of organizational and R&D environment on the above relationship.
Despite of the contributions it may has, the deficiencies are as follows. It is difficult to fully reflect the real situation of the inventor with the limited enterprise patent data. Moreover in practice, leaders and colleagues are listed as co-inventors, and the knowledge field of such inventors in the patent description is quite different from the reality, so it should be refined in the future. Thirdly the effect of brokerage role division can be improved by the increase of sample size. Therefore, in the future, it is necessary to improve its performance indicators in combination with some algorithms of community structure. At the same time, it is also necessary to consider some simplified means and further carry out multi-party verification in combination with other indicators, so as to define the inventor group more accurately.
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Received: 15 July 2021
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