The nature of ICT in technology convergence: A knowledge-based network analysis

The role of design engineers: Evidence from intra-firm knowledge and collaboration networks

Successful new product development requires the integration of design and engineering, bridging the gap between technological feasibility and user-centric considerations. However, direct collaboration between designers and engineers with heterogeneous knowledge presents challenges. In this context, the role of design engineers-professionals skilled in both design and engineering-becomes pivotal. This study categorizes inventors into three primary groups: engineers, designers, and design engineers based on the type of patent applications they hold and investigates their differences in knowledge portfolios and collaboration patterns. The study relies on patent data for 4,665 US publicly-traded firms from 1980 to 2015 from the PATSTAT database, and constructs two networks for each firm period: a social network of inventors and a knowledge network of knowledge elements. Findings show that design engineers are highly connected within the social network but have disconnected knowledge in the knowledge network in comparison to engineers. While design engineers may not be the primary drivers of firms' technological innovations, they facilitate interdisciplinary communication and decision-making, fostering a design-technology integrated new product development environment. This research has practical implications for firms seeking to optimize their innovation processes by creating interdisciplinary teams that harness the complementary strengths of engineers and design engineers.

Discovering driver nodes in chronic kidney disease-related networks using Trader as a newly developed algorithm

Thanks to the advances in the field of computational-based biology, a huge volume of disease-related data has been generated so far. From the existing data, the disease-related protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks seem to yield effective treatment plans due to the informative/systematic representation of diseases. Yet, a large number of previous studies have failed due to the complex nature of such disease-related networks. For addressing this limitation, in the present study, we combined Trader and the DFS algorithms to identify a minimal subset of nodes (driver nodes) whose removal produces a maximum number of disjoint sub-networks. We then screened the nodes in the disease-associated PPI networks and to evaluate the efficiency of the suggested method, it was applied to six PPI networks of differentially expressed genes in chronic kidney diseases. The performance of Trader was superior to other well-known algorithms in terms of identifying driver nodes. Besides, the proportion of proteins that were targeted by at least one FDA-approved drug was significantly higher among the identified driver nodes when compared with the rest of the proteins in the networks. The proposed algorithm could be applied for predicting future therapeutic targets in complex disorder networks. In conclusion, unlike the common methods, computationally efficient algorithms can generate more practical outcomes which are compatible with real-world biological facts.

China's non-ferrous metal recycling technology convergence and driving factors: A quadratic assignment procedure analysis based on patent collaboration-based network structural hole

Technological convergence is an important organizational innovation capability, essential for improving the core competitiveness of green and sustainable industries. However, studies have mainly focused on measuring technological convergence and have ignored the factors that affect the capabilities of such convergence capabilities. Thus, this study attempts to bridge this gap by providing an in-depth analysis of the impact of structural holes in inter-organizational technical cooperation networks. This technological convergence is studied from the perspective of a patent. It also considers the moderating effects of the degree of patent cooperation and the cooperation distance. It employs the social network theory to construct inter-organizational patent cooperation, and technological convergence networks, to facilitate the analysis of the effect of structural holes on such a convergence. It empirically examines 52 non-ferrous metal recycling organizations, with close patent cooperation. Accordingly, the structural hole constraint index by the inter-organizational patent cooperation network, shows a positive U-shaped curve relationship with technology convergence. Moreover, the degree of inter-organizational patent cooperation strengthens the positive U-shaped relationship, and the distance of cooperation weakens the influence of the structural hole constraint index on technology convergence. Therefore, managers and policymakers should encourage more industry-academia-research or patent alliances and designate policies to promote such cooperation.