Strategic Network Formation with Structural Hole in RaD Projects: The Case Study on Japanese Cosmetic Industry

Abstract

The arrangement of R&D refers to the issue of the linkage between structural holes in a network. In order to examine the linkages between multiple R&D projects in a company, we use the patent information as the index of R&D capability and examine the change of R&D network structures by social network analysis and text mining. In this paper we focus on top-shared companies in Japanese cosmetic industry, and suppose that these companies keep their market shares due to their smoothly development of new products to cope with the threat of new entrants from other industries. The analysis in this paper include: 1) calculate the constraint index, and create heat-maps to visualize the change of the constraint index, changes of structural holes personnel and the changes of R&D areas the structural holes personnel involved, 2) analyze the change of the structural hole. We found that Shiseido has adopted the overconcentration organization which emphases on cooperation because the percentage of persons who belongs to the biggest sub network in patent networks of the years is high. Other companies have adopted decentralized R&D projects which differentiated by each function. In addition, we disclosed the differences about structural hole on R&D organization in each company.