26th International Association for Management of Technology Conference - IAMOT 2017

Emerging technologies like mobile broadband, SDN, cloud computing and big data lead to the rapid development of ICT (Information Communication Technology) industry. Graphene, as an emerging and promising technology, plays an unsubstitutable role in the ICT upstream material industry and serves as the most disruptive new materials in twenty-first century. At present, application products of graphene technology, such as super capacitors, cells, touch screens, sensors, microelectronic devices, semiconductor products and so on, have been applied to ICT industry. Having a good understanding of application and development of graphene technology is the key to the future competition in electronic markets for ICT enterprises. Patent contains abundant technological, commercial and legal information which regard as vital data resource to identify technology innovation. Patent analysis is an effective tool to discover, portray and utilize technological information from different knowledge base. From current literature review, patent statistics and patent bibliometrics approaches are the most widely-used patent analysis approaches. In this paper, we take graphene technology in ICT industry as object of research and introduce GREP model based on patent analysis. In order to realize the goals of patent analysis, we select patent data from Derwent Innovations Index platform which facilitates rapid, precise patent searching. After retrieving 2788 patents from Derwent Innovations Index platform, we shall pioneer GREP model to utilize patent analysis for promoting the development of graphene technology in ICT industry. Actually, GREP model is generally acknowledged as a convictive tool to analyze enterprise's internal competition advantages. By introducing patent indicators to the previous GREP model, we build up a new GREP model based on patent analysis, then analyze graphene technology in ICT industry from Governance, Resource, Entrepreneur and Product dimension. GREP model based on patent analysis should at least cover following basic tasks which are describing the status quo of technology, identifying core patents, mapping technological evolution path and finding technological hotspots. It can be seen from the patent analysis above, improved GREP model can analyze industry current situation from microcosmic side and overcome the influence of subjectivity. China, as a country has massive graphite reserves, plays an important role in graphene market. However, there is still a gap between China and other countries like the United States and Korea of graphene technology in ICT industry. To confront with this situation, we put forward suggestions on the patent layout of ICT enterprises in China and the future development and innovation countermeasures of graphene technology in Chinese ICT industry. The final purpose is to summarize IP policy implications and suggest that GREP model based on patent analysis can optimize management in ICT Industry and other future emerging technologies and industries. Furthermore, it is necessary for enterprises in ICT industry to attach great importance to graphene-related patents, which contains technology value and economic interests. Great efforts shall be focus on finding better patent analysis methods to identify technological hotspots precisely and make technical breakthrough in the near future.