Diversity in patterns of industry evolution: How an intrapreneurial regime contributed to the emergence of the service robot industry

Abstract

How do new industries emerge? This paper aims to answer this question by analyzing the key actors in this process. We focus on the new industry of service robot. By using data of Japanese patent applications, we analyze the role of new firms and of collaborations. We find that the emergence of the industry is mainly triggered by established large firms, rather than by new firms. We further show that collaborations are at the core of new industry formation, but that they possess distinct properties. As the emergence of this new industry matches to the characteristics of Japan's institutional and knowledge regime we essentially argue that the notion of regimes with fewer start-ups being inefficient is erroneous. Our main conclusion is that industry emergence in intrapreneurial regimes seems to be distinctive from entrepreneurial regimes.