ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Sustainable Food Processing
Volume 9 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2025.1606533
The Patent Innovation Ecosystem of China's Ready-to-cook Foods Industry: Spatiotemporal Evolution, Technical Clustering, and Collaborative Network Analysis
Provisionally accepted
- Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Macao Polytechnic University, Macao, China
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Introduction: The ready-to-cook (RTC) foods sector represents a rapidly growing industry where innovation patterns and technological evolution are pivotal for sustainable development. This study establishes a comprehensive "space-time-technology-network" analytical framework to systematically investigate China's RTC patent innovation ecosystem. Methods: We analyzed 1,180 patent records through an integrated approach combining time-series analysis, spatial distribution mapping, technology classification, and social network analysis to reveal multidimensional characteristics of RTC innovation. Results: Our analysis identified three distinct evolutionary phases in RTC patents: an embryonic stage (2018-2021), a boom period (2022-2023), and a current adjustment phase (2024). Innovation activities demonstrated marked regional concentration, forming three primary clusters: the Pearl River Delta, Yangtze River Delta-Shandong, and Fujian-Hunan regions. Technologically, the sector is dominated by food processing & forming technology and packaging technology, which have evolved into a highly interconnected "small world" network structure. While enterprises constitute the primary innovation drivers (76.54%), the collaboration network remains notably fragmented. Knowledge flows occur primarily through three channels: intra-corporate group collaborations, industry-university-research partnerships, and regional industrial clusters. Discussion: The RTC patent ecosystem exhibits four defining characteristics: explosive growth, regional agglomeration, multi-technology convergence, and fragmented collaboration networks. This study provides both a theoretical framework and empirical basis for understanding innovation dynamics of emerging food industries and offers valuable insights for promoting high-quality development in the RTC foods sector.
Keywords: ready-to-cook foods, Patent Analysis, Innovation ecosystem, spatiotemporal evolution, technical clustering, collaborative network
Received: 05 Apr 2025; Accepted: 08 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Cai, Hu, Yin, Yu and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Chunning Wang, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Macao Polytechnic University, Macao, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.