Machine-learning-based deep semantic analysis approach for forecasting new technology convergence

•A machine-learning-based convergence prediction framework is proposed.•Doc2vec-based semantic analysis is utilized along with link prediction and patent statistics.•Case study shows that consideration of text information enhances the performance of the prediction. Technology convergence is extremely important for creating novel value and introducing new products and services. Recently, a fluctuating and competitive environment has prompted radical technology fusions. Although many frameworks were suggested for predicting convergence, it was not easy to forecast fusion between new technologies. To overcome this issue, we propose a machine-learning-based framework that uses semantic analysis along with traditional methods such as link prediction and bibliometric analysis to identify convergence patterns. We exploit text information of patent for semantic analysis, which is time-invariant and useful for identifying semantic patterns of convergence. In particular, the document to vector method is used to identify the semantic relevance of technologies. We apply our framework to the convergence technology fields of (1) motor vehicles and (2) signal transmission and telecommunications. The results show that consideration of text information increases the performance for the prediction of new convergence.