Exploring potential R&D collaborators with complementary technologies: The case of biosensors

The study provides a framework for exploring potential R&D collaborators with technological complementarity in products consisting of multidisciplinary technologies. This framework is proper when firms have insufficient information on who may possess the desired complementary technologies. The proposed framework applies two exploratory methods to patent information. The first method, association analysis, mines the interaction between different technologies for the studied products, and produces results that are useful to understanding the complementarity of various technologies. The proposed framework then uses nonlinear principal components analysis to determine the relationship among integrated technologies, specific technology fields, and patentees. The proposed method allows firms to identify patentees with complementary technologies and locate potential R&D collaborators. This study uses an empirical case from the biosensor industry to illustrate how to identify potential R&D collaborators.