Effects of Incumbency and R&D Affiliation on the Legitimation of Electric Vehicle Technologies

Abstract

Non-economic forces distort “rational” competitions among emerging technologies and associated trajectories. For example, incumbent and credibly affiliated firms use their legitimacy to promote their technological preferences and denigrate the efforts of less legitimate firms. This article reports results of a study which examined these dynamics in the competition among emerging electrochemical innovations aimed at the electric vehicle industry. It also presents the first-known use of the technology forecasting technique called morphological analysis in business academia. Similarities and differences between media representations of innovation activities, versus actual industry-wide developments, were found to have theoretical and practitioner implications. It was found that (1) incumbent firms were not participating meaningfully, rendering that variable largely moot; (2) effects of R&D affiliation were marginally significant; that while (3) performance advantages and disadvantages were reported in the media much more frequently than respective cost-price advantages and disadvantages, that (4) the relative performance advantages and disadvantages of competing innovations were reported in a balanced way, but that (5) the pattern of reports concerning cost-price was unbalanced in a way that favored the dominant design plus relatively modest departures from it. The overall interpretation indicated that relatively modest types of innovations were “winning” the early battle in a subtle but important way, despite representing a trajectory that was not certain to be the most rational, from a performance and/or cost-price focus.