Applications of genetic algorithm and text mining on technology innovation

The notion of technology innovation is similar to the phenomena of natural evolution because a lot of concepts in technology innovation such as technology trajectory and path dependency was originated the ideas of evolutionary theory. However, existing studies just deal with conceptual relationship between technology evolution and biological evolution without quantitative, detailed analysis. Genetic algorithm is a good approach which can investigate the evolution of promising technology by defining the mutation and selection of technology. Thus, this research aims at proposing a new approach to applying the genetic algorithm to grasp the evolution path of technology. For this, first, the analogy between technology evolution and natural evolution is identified. Second, the morphology of a selected technology is defined by extracting the keyword information from patent documents which are collected from database of USTPO (United State Trade and Patent Office) through text mining. Third, genetic algorithm is applied to analyze the evolutionary pattern of technology and derive the configurations of promising technology with software, describing the cells, mutation and selection of technology.