| Strategic emerging industries are closely bound up to the lifeline of the national economy and national economic sovereignty and are valuable approaches to driving the economic growth mode from “factors and investment-driven” to “innovation-driven”.The key to cultivating and developing strategic emerging industries lies in how to accelerate the evolution of emerging technologies into strategic emerging industries.Emerging technologies,whose importance has been unanimously recognized by the government,enterprises and scholars,are evolving to strategic industries under the active promotion of these three parties.However,a multitude of practical difficulties still need to be overcome in the evolution process.Firstly,emerging technologies,as the product of breakthrough innovation,are susceptible to bottlenecks in the evolutionary process due to the influence of different factors,and their development is either put on hold for a long time or directly descended to “premature technologies”.Secondly,although the enthusiasm of enterprises for new technologies is widespread in the current business environment,only a few enterprises really dare to enter the field of emerging technologies and actually engage in R?D and market development of new technologies.Therefore,a key issue that needs urgent attention arises: how to overcome the obstacles in the development process of emerging technologies and stimulate the innovation vitality of start-ups in new technology fields,so as to push forward the evolution of emerging technologies into strategic emerging industries.Currently,the discussion on the evolution of emerging technologies to strategic emerging industries is still in its infancy,and the related research is faced with the double challenges of realistic scenario change and theoretical paradigm transformation.Specifically,the rise of the new industrial revolution promotes the rise of new phenomena such as digital innovation and cross-border innovation,and the links between innovation elements are increasingly closer,resulting in the gradual blurring of boundaries between organizations.As a result,previous studies on the evolution of emerging technologies have struggled to explain these complex emerging phenomena.The idea of an innovative ecosystem,which emphasizes value co-creation,provides a new perspective for the explanation of these new phenomena.At the moment of the transformation of the innovation research paradigm,it is of great theoretical significance to explore new phenomena in the process of emerging technologies evolving into industries by selecting appropriate theoretical research tools.In the process of exploring the evolution of emerging technologies to strategic emerging industries,research cannot be limited to a relatively macro theoretical level.Instead,it should go deep into practical problems and apply and practice theories for practical research objects.With regard to the evolution of emerging technologies into industries,research on start-ups is of particular importance.Emerging technology startups are born when entrepreneurs capture the entrepreneurial opportunities triggered by technological changes,and naturally possess the advantage of “moving first” in emerging technology fields.Among many key fields,it is start-ups that take the lead in bringing emerging technologies out of the laboratory and advance them into general-purpose technologies that are vital to the entire socio-economic system.However,existing studies on start-ups focus more on the antecedent variables that affect the survival and growth of start-ups but fail to put forward a systematic theoretical framework on how start-ups promote the evolution of emerging technologies in industries.Based on the above argument,the following three sub-research questions are discussed in this study around the core question of “how emerging technologies evolve into strategic emerging industries”:(1)How emerging technologies evolve into strategic emerging industries.Can innovation ecosystem theory deconstruct the evolution of emerging technologies into strategic emerging industries? Can a corresponding analytical framework be constructed based on the innovation ecosystem theory? If yes,what are the characteristics of this theoretical framework? Are there some limitations? What is its scope and boundary in practical application?(2)The model of start-ups promoting the evolution of emerging technologies to strategic emerging industries.How can start-ups drive emerging technologies to evolve into strategic emerging industries? What problems do startups face in this process? What mechanisms are there in this process? Has a certain evolution pattern been formed?(3)The path of start-ups promoting the evolution of emerging technologies to strategic emerging industries.How do start-ups balance different decisions of“technological innovation” and “market development” under the condition of scarce resources? Can these decisions be organically combined and form different strategic combinations? If so,can these combinations form a certain path and configuration to explain the mechanism of start-ups accelerating the evolution of emerging technologies to industries through specific strategic actions?Based on the theories of emerging technology evolution and innovation ecosystem,this dissertation expounds on the above research problems by using the methodologies of literature research,theoretical deduction,case study,grounded theory and fsQCA,and draws the following conclusions:First,in response to the problem of “how emerging technologies evolve into strategic emerging industries”,a corresponding analysis framework is established in this dissertation based on the innovation ecosystem theory,and then the framework is applied to the case of face-scanning payment technology.The conclusion of the case study shows that start-ups play a vital role in the process of emerging technology evolving to industry.On the basis of case application,the characteristics,limitations and application scope of the analysis framework are defined.Second,based on the analysis framework of the innovation ecosystem,this dissertation studies the actions and mechanisms of start-ups to promote the evolution of emerging technologies to strategic emerging industries by taking 10 emerging technology start-ups as examples and adopting the grounded theory research paradigm of interpretivism.With the support of case data,and taking the path of value evolution as the core,the corresponding industrial evolution models are summarized,which responds to the concerns of start-ups in the existing emerging technology research.Third,from the overall perspective of the “technology-market-environment”,this dissertation empirically analyzes the path and configuration of start-ups to promote the evolution of emerging technologies to strategic emerging industries by using the fsQCA method.Based on the questionnaire survey data of 207 emerging technology start-ups in China's strategic emerging industries,this dissertation demonstrates five configurations of emerging technologies' evolution to strategic emerging industries: technologyenvironment-oriented,market-environment-oriented,policy-environment-driven,technology and market dual-driven and comprehensive-driven. |
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