Automated identification of technologically similar organizations

This article introduces and validates a method for identifying technologically similar organizations, industries, or regions by applying the techniques from information science for term similarity to international patent classifications. Several applications of the method are explored, including identifying hidden competitive threats, finding potential acquisition targets, locating university expertise within a technology, identifying competitor strategy shifts, and more. One advantage of the method is that it is size invariant, meaning, for example, that it is possible for a huge corporation to identify smaller firms in its space before they become significant competitors. Another advantage is that technologically similar organizations can be identified on a large scale without any particular knowledge of the technology or business of either source organizations or target organizations.