Abstract

This study aims to investigate the multidisciplinary knowledge network of Chinese enterprise-enterprise patent cooperation in food industry. Multidisciplinary knowledge network which come from enterprise-enterprise patent cooperation is an important network platform to improve innovation performance and to implement multidisciplinary and multi-sectoral cooperation. The actual dynamic variation and structure characteristics of the network and the distribution characteristics of disciplines in the network besides are analyzed by the method of social network analysis based on 36731 pieces of enterprise-enterprise cooperation patent in food industry which come from State Intellectual Property Office of the People’ Republic of China from 1985 to 2010. The multidisciplinary knowledge network whose structure is comparative perfect as the result shows that its carriers, the enterprises, play a positive role on knowledge flow and innovation performance in food development. At the same time, the method and the result of analysis in this study are provided both for the government and enterprises as theoretical reference and empirical material to their innovation strategy.

Keywords:

Food industry, multidisciplinary knowledge network, patent cooperation, social network analysis,

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Competing interests

The authors have no competing interests.

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The authors have no competing interests.