Patent strategy in the digital transformation era

The digital transformation and big data paradigms have expanded across many research fields, including both strategy and innovation. Although existing research attempts to keep up with the pace of these phenomena, more in-depth knowledge of how patent big data can help firms and managers in their decision-making process is still needed. Based on patent co-classification analysis, this paper aims to provide two different but complementary patent tools; the first exploits ex-ante patent information whereas the latter integrates it with ex-post details extracted by patent documents. We further investigate the technology positioning and links as well as examine the industry’s «excellence» technology structure conceived as the combination of the technology elements that has yielded high-impactful inventions.