Technological capabilities and late shakeouts: Industrial dynamics in the advanced gas turbine industry, 1987-2002

This paper focuses on technological discontinuities and late shakeouts in mature industries. The empirical case is combined-cycle gas turbine technology in the power generation industry, where two of four main incumbents (GE, ABB, Siemens and Westinghouse) exited the industry after several years of competition. We show that the vast differences in firm performance are strongly related to variation in technological capabilities, such as sourcing and integration of knowledge from related industries and after-launch problem-solving. The findings from this case may also be of general interest for studies of dynamics in other mature, complex industries.