| The technological paradigm theory is widely used to explore the trend of technological development in the context of technological change.The technological change includes the transformation of technological paradigm and technological trajectory.The concept of technological paradigm refers to the solution framework for specific technological problems,while the technological trajectory refers to a pattern of problem solving in the context of the technological paradigm that it belongs to.The theory of technological paradigm considers the incremental innovation as the improvement along the existing trajectory,while breakthrough innovation as a creative destruction of the existing trajectory.However,a growing number of literature have considered that such dichotomy of technological innovation modes may suffer some limitations.The new energy vehicle technology is considered as a typical type of breakthrough technology.The emergence of new energy vehicle technology has challenged the dominant position of traditional internal combustion engine technology.The trajectory of new energy vehicle mainly contains three trajectories,namely the battery electric vehicle technology trajectory,the hybrid electric vehicle technology trajectory,and the fuel cell vehicle technology trajectory.During the development of the past decades,the new energy vehicles have experienced four waves of development.These three trajectories had been considered as different waves of development during its distinct periods.Car manufactures had implemented different R&D strategies accordingly,while governments had also published different types of policy instruments to stimulate the development of distinct trajectory.The heterogenous choices made by them had lead to the uncertain future of new energy vehicle technologies.Every trajectory of new energy vehicle technology can be considered as an alternative for the internal combustion engine vehicle technology.However,the continuous improvement of each alternative trajectory can be also considered as the type of incremental innovation.Also,these trajectories have potential for cooperation.The technological change in new energy vehicle technology trajectories offers a perfect example for further enrichments of the technological paradigm theory.To solve the theoretical and practical dilemma of the technological paradigm theory,the paper takes the case of new energy vehicle technology to answer the question of how to select the promising breakthrough trajectory and how to identify technological opportunities that lies beyond it.The paper has the following highlights:First of all,the gap of how to compare the promising future among multiple breakthrough trajectories is closed.By using the patent data and curving fitting model,the method of technology forecasting is adopted to predict the promising future of three breakthrough trajectories.The hybrid electric vehicle has the most promising future,while the battery electric vehicle is ranked at the second place,then followed by the internal combustion engine vehicle.The fuel cell electric vehicle has the least promising future.The results have revealed that the technological impact and patent power have positive impact on the potential of technological trajectory.The either low technological maturity or high technological maturity will hinder the future development of the trajectory.Secondly,the scope of key technology identification is extended.The technological convergence method is adopted to identify the key technologies under the context of interdependence of technological trajectories.The indices of diversity and aggregation are adopted to investigate the convergent characteristics of technologies.Four quadrants are established based on these two indices.The strong convergence is highly consistent with the four waves of new energy vehicle technology,and also proves the promising future of the hybrid electric vehicle.The diffusion convergence represents key technologies that have potential for further improvements but still technological barriers to overcome.Focused convergence includes key technologies that have a narrower scope of application but are more likely to achieve technological improvements.Thirdly,the gap of how to identify technology vacuums in the promising technology trajectory is closed.The technology opportunity discovery method is adopted to detect the technological vacuum in the most promising technological trajectory.On the basis of the most promising trajectory,the risk of the technological failure is reduced.The results conclude that the technological vacuum of the hybrid electric vehicle technology trajectory include control system,cooperation between IC engine and electric motors,and energy storage system.These opportunities indicate that breakthrough technologies need to integrate knowledges from both inside and outside the current technology fields.The results of this research have strong practical implications for both enterprise managers and policy makers.Due to the emergence of the hybrid vehicle technology trajectory,enterprises should pay close attention to the innovation of shared technologies,and implement R&D strategies according to the development trend of the technology trajectory.At the same time,due to the blurring boundaries of technologies,enterprises can integrate external knowledge by adopting the strategy of open innovation and seize the development trend of key technologies.In addition,enterprises should also pay attention to the vacuum along the development of technological trajectory,and grasp the opportunities of technology development in advance.The government should maintain the principle of technology neutral in the development of new energy vehicle technologies.On the one hand,it can avoid the selective risks,which may lead to the failure risk of technology lock-in to sub-optimal solutions.On the other hand,due to the rise of hybrid vehicle technological trajectory and the development of interdependencies among trajectories,developing common technologies may yield better results.Therefore,the government should maintain the principle of technology neutral and promote technological change by encouraging technological innovations. |
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