Differentiated knowledge bases and catch-up in creative industries – A case of the online game industry in China

Abstract

Catch-up phenomena have been studied intensively in many manufacturing industries, but they have not been well explored in creative industries. Moreover, the internal heterogeneity of different segments within a specific industry has also largely been overlooked in the catch-up literature. This paper fills these gaps by analyzing the catch-up of a creative industry—the online game industry in China— and by extending the “windows of opportunity” framework with due account to the differentiated knowledge bases underpinning the value chain of the games industry. The findings show that the differentiated knowledge bases underlying this specific creative industry are combinatorial, and such combinations of different knowledge bases have led to distinct firm strategies in the different segments of game production (i.e. game design and content creation, programming, artistic creation, marketing) and catch-up outcomes (path skipping, following and creating). The introduction of the differentiated knowledge bases approach helps to provide a more nuanced understanding of catch-up in many industries where added-value are based on cultural tastes and symbolic knowledge, and thus leads to better policy implications for latecomers.