Identification and Management of opportunities for technology-based services: a patent-based portfolio approach

One of the most crucial activities for the successful development of new technology-based services is opportunity identification. Previous studies have mainly been customer-centred, focusing to specific types of technology-based services with the lack of data and quantitative methodology. This study proposes a technology-centred approach to identify and manage opportunities for technology-based services using business model (BM) patents. Network analysis with citation information is employed to analyse the effect of technology fields on service sectors at the macro-level, after which cross-impact analysis with co-classification information is applied to identify their relationships at the micro-level. A portfolio map is constructed from these macro- and micro-level analyses for identification and continuous management of opportunities. The operation of the proposed approach is provided with a case study of information technology (IT) and mobile services. The proposed approach could help to reduce the uncertainty in the fuzzy front-end stages of the development process of new technology-based services.