Study on the correlation characteristics of new industries based on technical perspective: The case of 3D printing-related industries

The emergence of new technologies will eventually create the relationship among different industries, and the different relationships among industries will reversely promote the continuous development of new technologies. This article proposes a procedural method with patent data to identify technology-related industries and analyze the inter-industrial relationships from a technical point of view. A matrix of correlation relationships within technologies is constructed through the International patent classification co-occurrence matrix to represent knowledge flows in the technical fields. Consistency between the technical fields and industries will expand to the knowledge flow among different industries. Finally, interrelationship among industries has been obtained through knowledge flow analysis. The concrete analysis of 3D printing techniques not only demonstrates the effectiveness of this method, but also provides a detailed description of the relationships among related industries. Current development of 3D printing technology focuses mostly on foundation research, whereas the industrial development of downstream applications is relatively slow. This means that the application industry has great development potential in the future, and it can provide future opportunities for technologies and new industries in China.