Topological Void Analysis A Mathematical Framework for Systematic Technical Innovation Discovery in Knowledge Spaces

Effective research ideation requires moving beyond a static understanding of prior work to trace how research problems and solutions evolve across the literature. Existing methods either treat papers as unstructured context or model scholarly evolution as isolated citation chains, overlooking interactions among research trajectories. We propose Tree-of-Ideas (ToI), a two-stage framework. EvoTrace reconstructs branching scholarly trajectories from citations, tracking evolving methods, resolved problems, and gaps. EvoAgent then reasons across trajectories to identify convergent problems and complementary solutions, generating grounded research ideas. Across six AI research topics, ToI achieves the highest score among automatic methods (6.27 vs. 5.36 for the strongest baseline on a 10-point scale), with strong Novelty (6.36) and Groundedness (7.00). Also, its score approaches that of human-paper references (6.29), demonstrating the value of cross-path evolutionary reasoning.

Current AI-assisted innovation systems typically apply a single ideation methodology (such as TRIZ or Design Thinking) using sequential prompt-based workflows that do not preserve intermediate reasoning structure. As a result, insights generated across methodologies remain fragmented, limiting traceability, synthesis, and systematic evaluation of novelty. We present IdeaForge, a knowledge graph-grounded multi-agent framework for innovation analysis and patent claim generation. IdeaForge integrates multiple innovation methodologies (TRIZ, Design Thinking, and SCAMPER) through specialist agents operating over a persistent FalkorDB knowledge graph. Each agent contributes structured entities and relationships representing contradictions, inventive principles, user needs, transformations, analogies, and candidate claims. The central contribution of IdeaForge is a cross-methodology convergence mechanism implemented through graph-based claim linkage. Claims independently supported by multiple methodologies are connected using CONVERGENT relationships, enabling identification of high-confidence innovation candidates through graph traversal. A downstream patent drafting agent generates structured patent drafts grounded in convergent claim subgraphs, reducing reliance on unconstrained language model generation. An InnovationScore formula ranks claims by convergent support, methodology diversity, claim strength, and prior art challenge count. We describe the graph schema, agent architecture, convergence detection pipeline, and patent synthesis workflow. Experiments on a legal technology use case demonstrate that graph-grounded multi-methodology synthesis produces more diverse and traceable innovation candidates compared to single-methodology baselines. We discuss implications for computational creativity, explainable AI-assisted invention, and graph-native innovation systems.

Forecasting innovation, intended as the emergence of new technological combinations, is a fundamental challenge for science and policy. We show that forthcoming combinations leave an early trace in the collective language of patents, with predictive signals detectable even decades in advance. We show that signal is not attributable to any single inventor, but emerges as a collective shift in how technologies are described across thousands of patents. To this end, we introduce TechToken, a transformer-based model that treats technologies, classified by International Patent Classification codes, as words in its vocabulary, learning the language of technologies by embedding these codes during fine-tuning. We define context similarity between code embeddings as a measure of linguistic convergence and show that it accurately predicts first technological combinations. TechToken also improves general representation quality, outperforming state-of-the-art models across different patent-related tasks.