Technology selection and new product development based on patent information

In a rapidly changing world, survival of enterprises is getting harder and harder. As international competition continues to intensify, significant number of firms are failing and consequently closing down in each year. These failures create some questions like: i) What is the role of technology selection in business success and failure? ii) Which technology is promising more for the future? iii) How can the change in technology be traced and foresighted? iv) Which data resources can be utilized as the indicator of technological change?This research thesis was inspired by the questions (as well as the answers/decisions about these questions) raised and the perceived lack of appropriate solutions to the accurate-technology selection problem. In this regard this thesis proposes four different frameworks to qualify the technology selection process. They all utilize the ?patent information? to supply decision support to the entrepreneurs. All of the frameworks are developed on the assumption that patent information is the one of the best indicator of technology change.The proposed frameworks include: Construction of ?Patent Alert System? (PAS); utilization of Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) for trendy technology selection; classification of technologies using fuzzy classifiers; and finally a new product development framework.The proposed PAS; enables users to set or configure alert(s) for the trend changes in any technology area by using the associated patent data. The second framework; facilitate the selection of trendy technology using patent statistics. The third one utilizes fuzzy classifiers to categorize technology as: dated, classic and trendy. And the final framework employs 5W1H (?Who-When-Where-Why-What-How?) and TRIZ (Theory of Inventive Problem Solving) procedure to the selected patents to create novel products. All these frameworks are exemplified by the cases.In summary, the proposed technology selection frameworks provide several tools and offers significant contributions to the current implementations.