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The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework for understanding core technological competencies and identifying the trends on the technological convergence of a business ecosystem using the patent information of leading firms in the system.

The proposed framework is composed of two steps: time-sequential text clustering analysis for comprehending changes in general technological fields and association rule analysis for identifying the trends of convergences in each field. The authors applied the proposed framework to the patents applied to United States Patent Trademark Office by Samsung Electronics, a market leader of the electronics industry, during the period from 2000 to 2011.

In the sequential text clustering analysis, trends of 14 technological fields such as data storage medium and data processing, mobile, lights and heats and memory are identified. Moreover, changes of technological convergence in each field are identified using association rule analysis. For instance, in the case of technologies related to lights and heats, convergences occurred between radio transmission systems and modulated-carrier systems during the period from 2000 to 2001. However, recent convergences appeared between technologies regarding controlling lights and liquid crystal materials since 2008.

Utilization of the framework will suggest new business opportunities to SMEs in a business ecosystem by identifying the trends of technological convergences.

The convergence of industries exposes the involved firms to various challenges. In such a setting, a firm's response time becomes key to its future success. Hence, different approaches to anticipating convergence have been developed in the recent past. So far, especially IPC co-classification patent analyses have been successfully applied in different industry settings to anticipate convergence on a broader industry/technology level. Here, the aim is to develop a concept to anticipate convergence even in small samples, simultaneously providing more detailed information on its origin and direction.

The authors assigned 326 US-patents on phytosterols to four different technological fields and measured the semantic similarity of the patents from the different technological fields. Finally, they compared these results to those of an IPC co-classification analysis of the same patent sample.

An increasing semantic similarity of food and pharmaceutical patents and personal care and pharmaceutical patents over time could be regarded as an indicator of convergence. The IPC co-classification analyses proved to be unsuitable for finding evidence for convergence here.

Semantic analyses provide the opportunity to analyze convergence processes in greater detail, even if only limited data are available. However, IPC co-classification analyses are still relevant in analyzing large amounts of data. The appropriateness of the semantic similarity approach requires verification, e.g. by applying it to other convergence settings.

“It should also be noted that the objective of convergence and equal distribution, including across under-performing areas, can hinder efforts to generate growth. Contrariwise, the objective of competitiveness can exacerbate regional and social inequalities, by targeting efforts on zones of excellence where projects achieve greater returns (dynamic major cities, higher levels of general education, the most advanced projects, infrastructures with the heaviest traffic, and so on). If cohesion policy and the Lisbon Strategy come into conflict, it must be borne in mind that the former, for the moment, is founded on a rather more solid legal foundation than the latter” European Commission (2005, p. 9)Adaptation of Cohesion Policy to the Enlarged Europe and the Lisbon and Gothenburg Objectives.

Fusion of new technologies and convergence has led to the emergence of new industries. This paper aims to present experiences of the concept of convergence from a patent citation analysis viewpoint. The main objective of the paper is to develop a tool for anticipating the emerging new industry segments.

The patent analysis methods have been used to get an idea of the stage of new industry segment in the intersection of the paper and electronics industries. The authors distinguish self‐citations from external citations, and further divide citations into two groups: within the industry and beyond the industry. Backward citations are used to evaluate the spill‐overs between industries and forward citations are used to evaluate the significance of technology‐based industry transformation.

The recognized trends of the trajectory changes and growing overlaps of technological fields show indications for possible convergence between industries. Differentiating between external and self‐citations within and beyond industry citations helps to provide more comprehensive prospects of a future technology competitive environment.

This study evaluated technology development in converging environments. It would be a scientifically significant contribution if the novel patent analysis methods could be used effectively for creating understanding in advance about the technology development and industry convergences.

The presented patent citation methodology provides new insights into the analysis of industry evolution, technological innovations and business development related to converging industries and technologies.

Organizations are consistently seeking innovative strategies and novel pathways to enhance business processes and create differentiation. The global business ecosystem is changing and there is growing demand for multi-modal digital technologies, big data consolidation and data analytics to harness a cost-competitive agile system. Technological convergence and integration of digital systems is one of the preferred methodologies that facilitates new and effective workflows and revives business processes. The progressive interlinking of digital technologies with business operations leads to the convergence and blending of management disciplines, devices and applications. The growing inconsistencies in managerial understanding regarding the benefits of convergence prompts a comprehensive examination of digital convergence pathways, identifying the impacts on converging entities and business objectives. The State bank of India (SBI) mega-merger case study was selected to investigate the pragmatic framework of digital convergence and to understand the impacts on interlinked entities such as: business operations, strategic management, project team that support value creation and competitive differentiation. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the phenomena of techno-fusion of emerging technologies creating new opportunities, business models and unique strategies for global banking and financial service organizations.

This study applies the qualitative, inductive research method using critical reflection of before and after the implementation of convergence and digital integration strategies. The SBI case study employs this research strategy based on the premise that banks must stay agile and highly responsive to the changing environment to enhance its value proposition and competitive differentiation objectives. The study methodology incorporates cooperative inquiry and multiple levels of analysis using data collection techniques of exhaustive review of archives, informal interviews, questionnaires and observations to identify the synergistic process improvement pathway. The study is grounded on the concept that the convergence of diverse business pathways involves innovative and interlinked project, strategic and information technology (IT) workflows that results in open innovative systems.

The studies identify that organizational innovation and creative solutions are a result of ecosystem turbulence, environmental force diversity, competitive pressure and the need for differentiation. Organizations that harness the power of digital fusion and convergence of management, systems and data generate a competitive advantage. The technological convergence strategy pulls multiple business and technology processes (project, strategic, IT, Cloud, AI and business process management) at the organizational, divisional or functional level generating new opportunities and threats, new business models and unique growth strategies for global banking and financial services organizations. Organizations that fully integrate techno-fusion of business and digital strategies produce synergistic effects and enhance adaptability, innovation and resiliency in the face of competitive challenges.

Additional areas that can be explored further as an extension of this study are listed below: identifying factors to improve the speed of convergence; the current results are limited to large size organizations where formal management and technology functions are distinctive. Similar studies on smaller organizations are warranted.

This study focuses on the evolving field of technology innovation, which is increasingly being intertwined with business operations. Innovative digital technology is enabling the convergence of the disciplines of management, digital devices and applications. This facilitates the creation of a pragmatic framework that supports convergence of business operations, strategic management and digital fusion which leads to value creation and competitive differentiation. The techno-fusion of emerging technologies and digital strategies generates new opportunities and threats, new business models and unique growth strategies for organizations.

This study aims to contribute to the comprehension of managerial implications in all the new convergences fields: bioinformation technology (BIT), nanoinformation technology (NIT), nanobiotechnology (NBT) and bioinformation–nanotechnology (BINT). The phenomenon of convergence that significantly impacted economies and societies in the information technology era has continued to be combined with new technologies such as nanotechnology and biotechnology. Many countries have tried to seize the initiative to strengthen the future competitiveness, and it become increasingly important for roles of companies to expand applications of the new convergence.

From a company-based perspective, the study quantifies leading companies’ degree of influence in each convergence field.

However, the result shows that companies’ influences are not mature enough to transfer the initiatives from both the NBT and BINT convergence fields. In addition, this study presents a perceivable framework for companies/institutions by identifying which technological fields the companies/institutions are influential in and what degrees of technological impact are shaped among them. As a result, this allows companies/institutions to recognize their environments squarely.

This study applied the replacement process that can reinforce the investigation of the extent to which a firm has a significant ability to influence others directly and indirectly. From the methodology perspective, such replacement can intensely display the structure and the extent of competition among firms. Therefore, the results provide an explicit information to understand the overall business situation.

Research paper

This paper reviews one of the crucial issues in the recent growth literature concerning the hypothesis of cross country convergence of levels and growth rates of income per capita implied by the neo‐classical growth model, both in the Solow‐Swan and Rampsey‐Cass‐Koopmans versions. The alternative endogenous growth models, consistent with permanent income inequality, are considered. Convergence to a common income level versus divergence is discussed from a theoretical point of view. Then, empirical tests of the convergence property are presented. What emerges is that Barro type regressions and their findings about “conditional” convergence are questionable and cannot be used to give a definitive response on this issue.

This paper aims to explore the digital economy in the fields of the most promising new technologies: information and communication technologies, biotechnology and nanotechnology. It highlights the convergence of nano-, bio-, info- and cognitive (NBIC) technologies by developing a model for the accurate evaluation of different types of options in the development process of convergent technologies.

The empirical research is based on theoretical analysis and case studies. The authors conducted six in-depth interviews. The study covered different research projects led by centres of excellence, competence centres and institutions that support the transfer of innovations in the economic and business environment.

The research findings prove that there is a convergence of NBIC technologies that can be observed and modelled. The created evolutionary model of NBIC convergence, also based on the theory of real options, allows a proper evaluation of the entire convergence process.

For enterprises and scientific research institutions, the NBIC model could represent the starting point for developing further concepts of investment evaluation. The model also considers the indicators of the innovation system, which, in addition to the marketing area, include regulatory challenges of companies (competition, copyrights, patents, taxation, etc.).

This paper enhances the understanding of new technologies in a digital economy. The purpose of this study is to clarify the principal factors for the effective observation and measurement of the convergence phenomenon. It also offers suggestions for improvement of the research and innovation system in the new economy.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to present a bibliometric analysis and systematic literature review of industry convergence and value innovation to understand the current research status; second, to provide a coherent theoretical research framework for future research.

This study adopts a two-step analysis approach by combining bibliometric analysis and systematic literature review to explore the research topic of industry convergence and value innovation. Besides, two bibliometric tools, HistCite and VOSviewer, were applied to this study.

This study found that Stefanie Bröring and Fredrik Hacklin are the top two most influential authors among all authors in the sample publications. Technological Forecasting and Social Change is one of the top-ranking journal that often publishes this topic of articles. Germany and the University of Munster are the most influential country and institutions, respectively. Besides, five core research themes were identified based on keywords co-occurrence map, theoretical lenses, factors promoting industry convergence, indicators of industry convergence, the impact of industry convergence and emerging research directions. Based on the above analysis, this paper constructed a theoretical research framework of industry convergence and value innovation.

This paper only draw data from one database – Web of Science – which cannot provide broad coverage of the research topic. Besides, the bibliometric method of this paper is based on high local citation score and high-frequency words, articles in the skirting subjects’ area may not be analyzed.

With the rapid development of technology, such as nanotechnology, radio - frequency identification (RFID), etc., the iterative upgrading of products also comes. As a result, the boundary between industries is gradually blurred, and the phenomenon of industry convergence appears. Therefore, managerial decision-makers are facing challenges of how to respond to the convergence phenomena. From the firm level, firms are facing the problem of value innovation of the existing product, new product development and core competence improvement. Industries are facing the problem of transformation and upgrading. This paper provides certain theoretical insights for both firms and industries to guide the practice accordingly.

This paper is the first to use a bibliometric method to examine the topic of industry convergence and value innovation. In addition, this paper presents an in-depth analysis of this topic and provides a comprehensive theoretical research framework for future study.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the history and development of the automobile industry Furthermore the paper discusses convergence in the context of discontinuous competitive environment and possible management responses to changes.

The findings of this paper are based on the analysis of the auto industry and the changes triggered by advances in related industries and socio‐economic forces.

The rate of change in innovation is leading to the creation of new industries and the disintegration of the industry classifications due to convergence of multiple needs previously served by different industry groupings. As such, firms have to upgrade their environmental scanning systems to detect competitive forces beyond the industrial competitive boundaries.

The paper provides a comprehensive review of convergence and disruptive technologies and the resulting implications for the automobile industry.

The paper highlights the breakdown of barriers in terms of industry classification. Customer's needs could be served by other firms in hitherto distinct industry groupings.