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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - GLOTRAINS (Global Transitions and Innovation Systems)

Teaser

Summary

World development is at a critical turning point. Globalisation has become ever more impactful. At the same time, we see a new long term industrial development cycle coming into full swing that builds on Information and Communications Technology while societies all over the world have to cope with sustainability challenges. These changes lead to a situation where industrial leadership may rapidly shift from one country to another. Europe 2020 reckoned these challenges under its Flagship Initiatives, in particular â€œAn industrial policy for the globalisation eraâ€™â€™. Drawing on scholarship from the field of Innovation Studies, GLOTRAINS aims to make major contributions to the emerging global innovation system frameworks, combining literatures on industrial catch-up cycles, shifts in global leadership and environmental sustainability transitions. More specifically, the project aims at further elaborating the Innovation System framework to encompass a globalised and dynamic perspective, while asking whether and how national industrial policy can still play a decisive role. Empirically, this project analyzes the global competition of the solar photovoltaic industry. The national competence of countries in the solar photovoltaic industry is compared relatively to their prior competence in the semiconductor industry to understand the industrial dynamics that underpin the global transition process from standardized mass-produced sectors towards more valuation-based cleantech sectors.

The findings of GLOTRAINS show that rapid developing countries like China could potentially leapfrog incumbent countries in key global industries in the emerging green era as they find strategies to proactively create values for new products and services, create new market demands, create new directions for technological changes, and reshape socio-technical configurations. This is especially insightful to develop new concepts of how developing countries may endogenize windows of opportunity in the green era. On the other hand, middle-income trapped countries like Malaysia who are still primarily manufacturing-based in industries like the solar photovoltaic should find new positioning in the global value chains. This is especially crucial for developing countries that aim to break out of the vicious industrial catch-up cycles that do not lead the countries to high income-level status.

Work performed

The secondment of GLOTRAINS (in collaboration with Aalborg University) was accomplished in December 2017, followed by potential scientific collaborations in future. All literature identified as relevant were thoroughly reviewed and a bibliometric analysis was conducted to identify the missing links and potentials for integration between catching-up and transitions studies. The fieldwork of expert interviews was conducted in both China and Malaysia in 2018. A total of about 40 interviews were conducted and recorded. The interview recordings were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using MaxQDA qualitative content analysis software. At the same time, a patent analysis was conducted to derive complementarities to the interview data. GLOTRAINS has successfully demonstrated how the two scholarly communities (catching-up and sustainability transitions) could be scientifically bridged. Catching-up studies could benefit greatly from the process-oriented approach used by transitions studies to better analyze the role of agency in proactively shaping processes of innovations other than building technological capabilities: i.e. the creation of legitimacy, demand for new markets, direction for technical change, etc. Meanwhile, the development of transitions studies has been primarily OECD based and can benefit greatly from insights of catching-up studies in order to better understand global leadership changes that take place as a result of industrial leapfrogging by developing countries. Results of GLOTRAINS were presented in the international conferences of both communities to ensure two-way dissemination of findings and in selected policy oriented conferences in OECD countries between 2017-2019. Furthermore, GLOTRAINS was also presented to selected policy makers in China (individually) and Malaysia (through a policy workshop).

Final results

The GLOTRAINS project brings new theoretical insights to the frontier of innovation studies. More specifically, it shows that there are great potentials to bridge the catching-up and sustainability transitions studies. This is especially crucial to answer the fundamental question of how developing countries could simultaneously achieve the goal of moving to higher income levels (through new industries) while transitioning effectively to environmental sustainability. Drawing from both transitions studies and catching-up studies, the project introduced new scientific approaches to studies concerning development issues to show how latecomer countries could play a more proactively role in capturing the new windows of opportunity in the green era. This include building their development strategies based on a broader set of aspects other than just benchmarking knowledge and technological capabilities, and proactively shaping new institutional contexts other than just treating them as given background conditions.

Beyond theoretical contribution, GLOTRAINS is highly insightful to better understand the policy trade-off faced by policy makers in developing countries in terms of technological/industrial catch-up versus sustainability transitions. A policy workshop was conducted with Malaysian Sustainable Energy Development Authority in September 2018 where the researcher presented her findings from both the fieldwork in China and Malaysia, focusing on how Malaysian PV industry can learn from the Chinese PV industry in terms of catching-up and sustainability transitions. On top of that, the findings of GLOTRAINS reveal how developing countries may leapfrog incumbent countries in global industries, hence provide important insights for OECD countries to better understand the dynamics of global industrial leadership changes and how OECD may better position themselves in the emerging industrial era.