A framework for understanding product market innovation paths – emergence of hybrid vehicles as an example Online publication date: Fri, 05-Feb-2010
by Marc Dijk, Rene Kemp
International Journal of Automotive Technology and Management (IJATM), Vol. 10, No. 1, 2010
Abstract: In the last few years, the automobile market witnessed a surprising rise in sales of a new type of engine: hybrid-electric engines. This is surprising, since the sector is typically averse to radical technological change of engines. The internal combustion engine has been around for more than 100 years after all. Economists have explained the dominance of internal combustion (IC) technology mostly from processes of learning and scale economies, which lead to lock-in of an established technology. Those theories have however, difficulties in explaining more radical technological transformations, which typically interrelate with changes in the social and regulatory context. In this article, we offer a framework for analysing the emergence of radical product innovation paths from a co-evolutionary perspective. The framework is applied for the case of emergence of electric and hybrid-electric engines on the automobile market after 1990.
Existing subscribers:
Go to Inderscience Online Journals to access the Full Text of this article.
If you are not a subscriber and you just want to read the full contents of this article, buy online access here.Complimentary Subscribers, Editors or Members of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Automotive Technology and Management (IJATM):
Login with your Inderscience username and password:
Want to subscribe?
A subscription gives you complete access to all articles in the current issue, as well as to all articles in the previous three years (where applicable). See our Orders page to subscribe.
If you still need assistance, please email subs@inderscience.com
Our Blog 
Follow us on Twitter 
Visit us on Facebook