Sourcing of Innovation as Trendsetting in the Imaging Sector

We also gratefully acknowledge the advise and assistance of Juan Alcacer, Dasapich Thongnopnua and Le Truong. Micropatent provided the data on patenting and their forward, backward citations in highly readable format. ABSTRACT The paper presents a preliminary framework of industry evolution taking the photographic sector as a case for documenting the role of firms in shaping the trajectory away from chemical to electronic based imaging. During the three most recent decades this sector has evolved from a dominant design that relied heavily on silver halide towards designs that are strongly embedded in the computer hardware and software domain of knowledge. The evolution spanned Japan, the US and EU and entailed the recombination of existing and new bundles of knowledge which is more or less unique to different firms. Exploring patent citations across many patent classes, we present an analysis of a six firms whose combinative roles are shown to shape the evolutionary trajectory of their sector. Firms might be cast in the role of broker depending on the extend they amass bundles of knowledge which have both firm and inter-firm or sector specific origins. The results suggest that an understanding of industry evolution should draw from institutional, technological, historic-geographic and firm specific observations. " Photography appears to be an easy activity; in fact it is a varied and ambiguous process in which the only common denominator among its practitioners is in the instrument "-Henri Cartier-Bresson A major challenge for representing the evolution of an industry or market involves its multi-level nature in a wide range of disciplines. Industry boundaries are difficult to pinpoint, their onset or demise even less so. Mapping out changes that might either be endogenous (e.g., by the conduct of incumbents and/or their spin-offs) or exogenous (e.g., through the role of new entrants or regulators within such domains) are therefore fraught with many difficulties. We present a new attempt at documenting industry or sector evolution. We do so by focusing on imaging, confining ourselves to its most recent decades (1975-2005) during which it has witnessed a dramatic paradigm shift, with concomitant transformations across the globe and among various value chains including still and movie images, photocopying, lithography and distribution to equipment for image capturing, editing and publishing. Industry evolution can be understood through the lens of biology (e. their disruptive transitions have been conceived as being triggered by managerial or the levels of analysis and the choice …