Abstract: Identifying the future technology opportunities from the perspective of technology convergence
can help enterprises adjust their R&D strategies in time and carry out R&D activities more efficiently.
Therefore, based on the patent data mining technology, this paper constructs a technology fusion recognition
and prediction model. This model constructs IPC co-occurrence network through Apriori algorithm, splits
the network into different technology cluster by Louvain algorithm, and explores the technical themes of
each cluster using LDA topic model. By constructing two indicators, “community fusion potential” and
“technology fusion value”, we evaluate the fusion value of the weak ties between communities. The weak
ties with high fusion value will be assembled to form a prediction network, and the future technological
opportunities can be explored by extracting keywords from the prediction network. Taking the electric
vehicle industry as an example, this paper makes an empirical study on the model.

Key words: Patent data mining, Technology fusion, IPC co-occurrence network, IPC cluster, Weak ties