This research proposes a data-driven systematic method to discover service opportunities in a specific service sector. Specifically, the method quantitatively identifies the important but unsatisfied customer needs by analyzing online review data. To represent customer needs in a structured form, the job-to-be-done-based customer outcomes are adopted from the outcome-driven innovation (ODI) framework. Therefore, job-to-be-done information is extracted from the review data and is transformed into customer outcomes. The outcomes having high service opportunities are selected by metrics for quantifying the importance and satisfaction score of the outcomes. This paper conducted an empirical study for hotel service using relevant review data. The results show that the method can identify customer needs in hotel service—e.g., maximizing safety to pay price/deposit, and maximizing possibility to avoid waiting at lobby—and objectively prioritize strategic directions for service innovation. Therefore, the proposed method can be used as an intelligent tool for the effective development of a business strategy.

The blockchain is a technology with high growth potential that increases social benefits by streamlining procedures, reducing costs, and innovating the way we work. Considering the growth potential of blockchain technologies, countries around the world are attempting to graft into various fields such as finance, logistics, and healthcare, and actively promoting technology development. Tracing and analyzing the developmental trajectories of blockchain technology can give great insight for R&D direction and strategies. We developed an improved knowledge persistence-based main path approach to identify technological trajectories of the blockchain technology. In addition, future technological directions for each sub-technology under blockchain technology were identified by the knowledge unconventionality metric. The results show that the blockchain technology can be divided into five sub-technologies, and each sub-technology has evolved with high technological interactions among other sub-technologies. Based on the last knowledge streams of the main paths, this paper suggests potential future directions for each sub-technology in the blockchain technology.

In this paper, the development trajectory of accounting information systems was analyzed using business method patents and main path analysis based on knowledge persistence. Knowledge persistence-based main path analysis can dramatically minimize the complexity of a knowledge network without omission of the dominant knowledge flows, and so it is a suitable selection for analyzing the business method patents on accounting information systems. The main findings from the empirical results are as follows: the empirical results show that accounting information system patents were developed along with the software patent of knowledge injected from the outside. Bookkeeping/accounting and taxation systems expanded from the basic calculation, storage, and payment technique to scalability to other techniques and functions in more complex situations. This research has found that technological advancement has facilitated and been supporting the development of accounting information system over the years, as shown in the patents filed under business solutions. There is a clear indication of the growing complexity of those patents, signifying the moves/advancement of corporate business information systems from financial accounting-oriented systems to more complex ERP systems.

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to provide direction for future research in the field of Korean medicine by analyzing microbiome based technologies emerging as a new diagnostic and treatment paradigm.Methods: To achieve the purpose of the study intellectual property data was used. After establishing citation network from registered microbiome-related US patents, citation network was analyzed by knowledge persistence-based main path approach to understanding technological trajectories. Furthermore, community detection algorithms were used to quantitatively identifying specific technological domain in a particular time period.Results: Results shows that early technologies in livestock industry contribute most to the recent patents. Knowledge in the patents flow through the path of food and beverage technological domain, and finally are inherited to the recent development of diagnosis, treatment and prevention technic.Conclusions: This study indicate that developing diagnostic tools which can link the composition of microbiome to specific diseases should be given high priority. Researches should lead to novel therapeutic strategies. Specifically, improving reliability of pattern identification and finding effective therapeutic compositions based on principles of Korean medicine is necessary.

Business method (BM) has been recognized as a key factor for business innovation. BM patents are widely used to analyze and understand BM domains. However, previous studies have not considered the significant characteristics of the BM domain and patents, such as relative weight for knowledge flows and various knowledge interrelations among sub-domains. This study employed a hierarchical main path analysis that considered the relative difference in knowledge inheritances and identified the knowledge structure in the BM domain. In addition, the knowledge unconventionality metric was adopted to optimize knowledge diffusion in the last layer for forecasting further developmental directions. The empirical analysis showed that the BM domain consists of eight sub-domains, and each sub-domain has a high interrelationship with other sub-domains. Most dominant knowledge was invented based on different types of knowledge in different sub-domains. In particular, the overall trajectories and future directions were analyzed according to the changes in relative importance of sub-domains. The dominant patents, trajectories, and future directions for each sub-domain were analyzed based on the high knowledge persistence and end-node information of the main paths.