Technological route between pionerism and improvement

This paper presents a systematic approach to determine the technological route between discovery, pioneering, radical creation and qualitative or quantitative improvement as the two extremities of a line of evolution regarding a certain inventive theme. The technological route is the result of a procedure based on a wide use of a patent search engine capable of Browsing Codes according to International Patent Classifications, and Clustering Texts to examine search results using linguistic technologies, and a tool able to analyse time data series to disclose their eventual logistic behaviour. Said procedure consists of four main steps: (i) determination of the initial search algorithm based on the characteristics of reference subject, patent or group of patents; (ii) definition and calculus of Intellectual Property Density (IPD) on the base of bibliometric results of search; (iii) IPD fitting into logistic curves and (iv) definition of a quick and semi-automated way to gather some inputs for further product innovation. The procedure still requires a minimum skill in patent searching and handling and search may have to be iterated some times before getting the desired outcome. By the way there is no need to read patents text and the time spent is comparable to a traditional search (i.e. according to EPO guidelines for search). The results obtained consist in fostering both forecasting activities by identifying quantitatively main evolution phase and problem solving activities by giving a dynamic view of the state of the art so that future problems may be taken into account in today solutions. One out of the several case studies already tested with this approach is presented with the aim of describing in detail each step performed.