Innovation cycle for ICT enabled general technology and its implications to co-evolution of technology and institutions The case of Smart PV (Photovoltaic)

This paper adopts the economic organization framework to the study of industrial dynamics in an international context. We formulated the evolution of solar photovoltaic technology in terms of a stage-gated innovation cycle and studied the institutional requirements for the transition across different stages of development. The objective of organization of the industry, taken technology as given at a given stage, can be understood broadly in terms of the contractual perspective. However, because of the observation of conspicuously different industrial organization structures across countries, this prompts us to further refine the contractual perspective by postulating that the achievement of contractual efficiency can be due to a variety of [economizing] mechanisms such as vertical integration and industry standards. The merging or recombination of ICT with PV necessitates a competence perspective to the understanding of industrial organization due to technological uncertainties, the increasing needs of coordination among different players to launch different business models. Different contractual efficiency mechanisms utilized in the preceding stage have different implications to such a transition. 1 Corresponding author: [email protected] This work is supported by a research assistantship associated with the 21 Century COE program in Science of Institutional Management of Technology (SIMOT) at Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo Japan. The usual disclaimers apply.