Towards a stage model of regional industrial path transformation

ABSTRACT

The recent debate on innovation-based structural change in Evolutionary Economic Geography is characterised by a strong focus on the rise of new industrial paths. This paper seeks to shift attention and cast light on radical innovation activities occurring within existing paths without necessarily leading to their dissolution. Departing from a systemic perspective of path development we propose a stage model of path transformation. We outline how radical change becomes initiated, reinforced and finally consolidated in established industrial paths. Particular attention is devoted to the ways in which actors – influenced by ‘the past’ and driven by visions and expectations (that is, ‘the future’) – exert agency to stimulate asset modification processes that are assumed to underpin path transformation and the reconfiguration of the wider support structures. The framework is applied to the analysis of the automotive industry in West Sweden, which is currently transforming towards the development of self-driving cars.

KEYWORDS:

• Path transformation
• evolutionary economic geography
• stage model
• assets
• agency

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Drawing on the definition of a newly created path (Binz, Truffer, and Coenen 2016, 177), an existing path can be defined as ‘a set of functionally related firms and supportive actors and institutions that are established and legitimized […]’.

² Agency can be defined as deliberate and purposive actions or interventions by actors in order to produce particular effects (Emirbayer and Mische 1998; Sotarauta and Suvinen 2018).

³ Similar phases have been used in the transition literature (Markard 2018).

⁴ See also Martin’s (2010) ‘path as a process model’ and Foray’s (2014) conceptualisation of the Entrepreneurial Discovery Process (EDP).

⁵ Focusing on the policy domain, Kivimaa and Kern (2016) identify four ways to destabilise existing systems, namely control policies (e.g. taxes and regulations), significant changes in regime rules (major changes in legislation), reduced support for dominant regime technologies (e.g. withdrawing subsidies) and changes in social networks through replacement of key actors (e.g. in policy advisory councils).

⁶ However, as expectations tend to follow a certain temporal pattering in form of early hype, later disappointment and finally more grounded views (in particular in capital-intensive sectors to attract attention of sponsors and to protect niche activities in early stages) (Borup et al. 2006), the absolute number of such artefacts or actions is often not sufficient to distinguish between transformation stages. Thus, a content analysis and additional qualitative and ‘prospective’ data (Steen 2016) are often necessary.

⁷ Searches were made by using the Swedish newspaper archive Mediearkivet Retriever, which covers virtually all Swedish printed and online news outlets and is searchable from the 1970s onward. We checked for the number of combined hits for [självkörande AND volvo] and [autonomy AND volvo]. Searches using other combinations of terms resulted in similar outcomes.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation [grant number MMW 2016.0014].