A Time to Create, Imitate, Dream and Execute: Entrepreneurship in Emerging Electric Vehicle Industry

Abstract

The human and economic costs of pollution and climate change are especially high for emerging markets; thus, the need to shift to sustainable technologies is essential and urgent. However, the development and commercialization of any new product requires an ecosystem consisting of resource providers such as investors, suppliers, complementors, favorable policy and regulations, and more importantly, a market for these products. How does such an ecosystem emerge, especially in an emerging market context where there are institutional gaps and even “normal” entrepreneurship is difficult? We investigate this question in the context of the Indian electric vehicle industry, using 40 years of archival data, 54 semi-structured interviews, and ethnographic field notes. Our findings suggest that institutional entrepreneurship is more complicated than previously imagined and involves multiple eras characterized by a distinct combination of technology, supplier and complementors, market and competition, capital, and regulation. Each era gives rise to a distinct type of entrepreneur (the Schumpeterian visionary, the Kerznerian opportunist, the Buchananian aesthete, and the Knightian pragmatist), and the actors in each era, often accidentally and unintentionally, create the conditions for the next, culminating over time in an electric vehicle ecosystem that can support viable businesses. We contribute to the literature on ecosystems by taking a longitudinal perspective and showing how ecosystems involving various actors emerge across multiple stages. We also adds to the literature on industry emergence by investigating an emerging market context where the chief source of uncertainty is not just technology but the interdependent and evolving uncertainty of regulation, market, capital and supplier.