Dynamics of innovation in solar cell industry: Divergence of solar cell technologies

Abstract

The dynamics of innovation in solar cell industry was researched based on the case studies of global solar cell industries. What is the dynamics of innovations in the solar cell industries? Japanese 1st group including Sharp, Kyocera, Sanyo and Mitsubishi is mainly doing the business by crystal silicon (c-Si) and amorphous Si (a-Si) solar cell. The industrial cluster of “Solar Island Kyusyu” is focusing on thin film solar cells. In USA, SunPower focuses on c-Si solar cell, First Solar of 1st place is producing CdTe solar cell and Nanosolar, Solyndra are developing CIGS. China including Suntech mainly produced c-Si solar cell. Q-cells in Germany expand from cell process to solar cell module and CIGS solar cell. As the results of the case studies, the diverse technologies of solar cell are taken for business by global solar cell industry. Therefore, in case of the solar cell industry, the innovation dynamics theory of Utterback can not apply to the innovation. What are the conditions to accept the diverse technologies such as the solar cell industries? To answer the question, the process day of the solar cell compared with LCD and semiconductor device. The main process days for poly-Si and a-Si solar cell are less than 1 day. This means that solar cell technologies are simple because they require shot process days to reduce the cost. The conditions of diverse technologies in business are extracted from the research results. First condition is simple technology, which means short process day. Second condition is the drastically increasing market. Third condition is high motivation to enter the industry. Under the above conditions, many companies want to enter the business even if their technology level. In other words, many companies enter the business using their adaptable technologies. As the results, the diverse technologies are accepted for business.