Focal Firms In The Dominant Design Emergence Based On Industry Convergence: Roles, Behaviors, And Effects

Industry convergence can promote emerging industries' innovation and provide a specific context for studying industrial innovation,while the electric vehicle(EV)industry based on industry convergence develops rapidly in the world and is widely concerned by theoretical research.The EV industry meets the the needs of social and economic development,for promoting industrial evolution and sustainable growth,and is an effective means to deal with environmental pollution,rising oil prices,energy security and other issues.It is rapidly emerging around the world.Major economies around the world are actively promoting the EV industrial innovation.At the same time,the Chinese government is also making great efforts to promote the EV industrial innovation.The Chinese government is committed to building a competitive and influential EV industry.Due to the distinct industry convergence,there are many focal firms from vehicle manufacturing,power grid and other industries in the fluid stage of the Chinese EV industry,which is different from the classical A-U model.And these focal firms are playing important role in the emergence of the dominant design in the Chinese EV industry.However,there are no studies to systematically analyze and study the roles and behaviors of focal firms in the dominant design emergence.Therefore,it becomes an urgent question to study focal firms' role and behavior in the dominant design emergence of the Chinese EV industry.Therefore,in the context of industry convergence,this research takes the Chinese EV industrial innovation as the background,and focuses on the roles and behaviors of focal firms in the dominant design emergence,taking the focal firms as the research object,using the behavioral perspective,by qualitative research and simulation model.The combined methodology is based on grounded theory,case study,and ABMs,to study the roles and behaviors of focal firms in the dominant design emergence,and to depict behaviors,and to simulate the effect of behaviors in the emergence of the dominant design.In this research,through the comparative analysis of industrial innovation based on racial innovation and industrial innovation based on industry convergence,focal firms are incorporated in the analysis of the dominant design emergence,and this study uses the logical deduction to explore the framework of the dominant design emergence based on integration of focal firms.In term of the focal firms that may play an important role in the emergence of industry dominant design through some behaviors,drawing on the innovator role theory,this study adopts behaviorism perspective to analyze and explore the role and role behavior characteristics of focal firms in the emergence of dominant design in the Chinese EV industry through qualitative research.Aiming at how is the gatekeeping behavior of focal firms in the emergence of industry dominant design,based exploratory longitudinal case on the firm level,the research explores to achieve intuitive description of the focal firms' gatekeeping behavior process in the dominant design emergence.For the dominant design emergence of the EV industry considering the effects of industrial gatekeeping behavior,the dominant design emergence involves multiple factors,including consumer,many focal firms' gatekeeping behavior,social economic factors,the product price,maintenance and use cost,technical performance of interaction,thus this research builds the Agent model and through the simulation experiments to explore the effects of industrial gatekeeping behavior in the dominant design emergence.Results are as follows:In the fluid stage of the pre-dominant design of the EV industry,the product innovation and competition are dominated by focal firms,and the rate of product innovation is not fast.Therefore,after incorporating focal firms in the analysis of the dominant design emergence,based on the logical deduction,the framework of the dominant design emergence based on integration of focal firms is proposed,which provides the overall guidance for the subsequent research content of this paper.The focal firms play the role of industrial gatekeeper in the Chinese EV industry.In order to become an industrial gatekeeper,the focal firms must have three kinds of behaviors: information-gatekeeping and platform-providing in the level of product development,benefit-gatekeeping in the level of industrial operation mode.Further,information-gatekeeping refers to that focal firms search,process and transfer external technological information to their industrial group members;platform-providing is that focal firms establish cooperation platforms which enable their industrial group members to take part in the new industry innovation;benefit-gatekeeping implies that for their own sake,focal firms advocate their propositions on dominant design and negotiate with focal firms from other industries.However,the existing literature does not systematically analyze focal firms' role and behavior in the dominant design emergence based on industry convergence.Hence the industrial gatekeeper role can enrich the innovators' role theory.This is an extension of the technological gatekeeper role that focuses solely on searching,processing,and disseminating external information to internally needed members.The role of industrial gatekeeper appears in the context of the industry convergence,rather than within the defined single industry boundary.When industrial gatekeepers play platform-providing behaviors,they choose key suppliers as interactive objects and other focal firms as interactive objects when play benefit-gatekeeping behaviors.The industrial gatekeeping in the emergence of the dominant design is an interactive evolution process of strategic intention,resource capability and design proposition.The interactive evolution process is closely related on the basic consensus between focal firms' strategic intention and between focal firms' design proposition.It means that,considering the strategic intent to design proposition,the emergence of the dominant design is more dependent on strategic intent.In addition,in view of the S-CK framework containing multiple agents,multi-focal firms are put into the framework.The interaction depiction of the industrial gatekeeping process of focal firms can be realized.This paper describes the behavior process of industrial gatekeeping,explains that the industrial gatekeeping behavior in the dominant design emergence based on industrial convergence is a process of interactive evolution based on strategic intention,resource capability and design proposition,and deepens the understanding of the dominant design theory.Focal firms' industrial gatekeeping is effective in promoting the dominant design.That is to say industrial gatekeeping can accelerate the emergence process of the dominant design.With the enhancement of industrial gatekeeping,the effective promoting of industrial gatekeeping on the diffusion speed of switch-on EVs is greater than that of plug-in EVs in the simulation period.However,the market share of switch-on EVs is far lower than that of plug-in EVs in the simulation period.The price reduction of traditional automobile will weaken the acceleration effect of industrial gatekeeping on the emergence process of the dominant design.However,as the industrial gatekeeping strengthen the offsetting effect of the price reduction of traditional automobile on industrial gatekeeping can decrease in the context of switch-on EVs,and the offsetting effect can increase in the context of plug-in EVs.Given that most of the existing studies on focal firms' role and behavior are based on the longitudinal cases,it is difficult of deeply and systematically analyzing the emergence process of industrial dominant design involving multiple factors and industrial gatekeeping behavior of multi-focal firms.Therefore,Agent-based Modeling is introduced to realize the simulation analysis of the focal firms' behavior in the dominant design emergence.The results of this research will help to understand the role and behavior of focal firms in the dominant design emergence,providing more analytical perspectives and empirical directions for the study of dominant design.And for actors seeking to enter the EV industry,the formulation of strategic behavior provides some references.For industry managers in innovation management of the new industry,they should be attention to the key actors,focus on information flows across industry and cooperation platform-providing on the technology development level,the benefit-gatekeeping on the industrialization innovation level,to encourage competition at the same time should also pay attentions to the negotiation and cooperation between focal firms.For participating firms in the EV industry,especially focal firms,they should understand their roles and make strategic adjustments according to their role.On the other hand,focal firms should be deeply aware of the important positive effect of forming the common cognition as soon as possible,instead of always competing,non-negotiation and quarrel.In a word,this research enriches the dominant design theory and the role theory in innovation to a certain extent,and provides support for innovation research.It also provides reference for industrial innovation management and new industry innovation analysis with industry convergence characteristics.