Abstract:     With the explosive growth of emerging technologies, the emerging industries have proliferated, which in turn accelerate technology iterations. An important characteristic of innovation in emerging technological fields is that it does not occur in isolation, innovations are generated and implemented by networks of interacting organizations and individuals. Thus, understanding what is the most efficient kind of innovative network becomes crucial for pursuing innovation performance and economic growth. 
    Within the innovative network, knowledge spillovers across technologies, frequent technology diffusion and convergence across different sectors occur. Thus, the innovative network gradually presents the characteristics of fuzzy network boundaries, flexible network connection, heterogeneity of innovators and easy flow of knowledge. Meanwhile, the network structure evolves to be between the ruled and the irregular status, showing a trend of de-core. The extant literature has not mentioned this kind of network structure. To address this gap, this paper proposes a "Liquification" innovative network, whose structure is between multi-core network and complete graphs. There is a high-density connection inside the "Liquification" network, making it easier to develop adjacent possibilities and spread new ideas or innovations. At the same time, it saves the newly generated useful linkages for a long time. Once the "Liquification" network is formed, innovation and invention will continue to emerge. This paper aims to study the formation mechanism of "Liquification" network，and use empirical test to further examine its characteristics.
    In mechanism analysis of "Liquification" network, we found that the technology diffusion and absorption can speed up technological development and improve its limit, delaying the coming of technology recession, thus extending the life cycle of the original technology. The frequent knowledge diffusion and integration among various innovative subjects shortens the distance between different technology networks. Boundaries between technological networks become blurred, and the diffusion of technology no longer depends on specific paths. The orderly diffusion process tends to be disorderly. The collision of information between different innovators changes the way of linking. Therefore, the innovative network presents feature such as knowledge heterogeneity, flexible links, strong network connectivity, strong knowledge mobility, widespread technology integration, and fuzzy network boundaries. The emerging technology innovative network present to be "liquified".
    In order to further verify the characteristics of the "Liquification" network in the mechanism analysis, this paper collects the patent data of the autonomous vehicle field in the Derwent Innovation Index and conducts an empirical analysis. Autonomous vehicle is a smart car that is driven by computer system, considered to be a disruptive innovation according to the emerging technology maturity curve released by Gartner. Observing networks in different time slices, we found that the technical domain increased sharply, providing potential opportunities for technological convergence. And the whole network connectivity was enhanced with a decreasing betweenness centrality and an increasing closeness centrality, indicating that integration between different technical fields is becoming more and more common and is no longer limited to some certain specific key technologies. 
   The results show that the formation of "Liquification" network can improve technology limits, accelerate technology development and extend the technology life cycle. The characteristics of "Liquification" network include knowledge heterogeneity, flexible links, strong network connectivity, strong knowledge mobility, widespread technology integration, and blurred network boundaries. It is also found that the network shows a de-core trend as the "Liquification" network formed. 

Key words:  emerging technology, innovative network, social network analysis, patent analysis, liquification