Modularity and discontinuous innovation: A patent data analysis in automobile industry

Abstract

As one major driving force to the growth of regional economy, discontinuous industrial innovation has been a focus field in previous literatures. Recent studies tend to offer modularity as a solution to growing complexity across the product, organization and industry domains. However, little attention has been paid to link modularity with discontinuous innovation. Therefore, our research aims to examine the relationship between modularity and discontinuous innovation at industry level. In fact, both of their information and evolutional paths can be explored by patent analysis. Thus, the patent data from automobile industry is used to explore their correlations. Corresponding indicators constructed by patent information are employed to analyze the dynamics of modularity and evolution of discontinuous technology in automobile industry. This analysis tries to provide a quantitative and dynamic perspective for understanding development of industrial technologies and demonstrating coevolution of modularity and discontinuous innovation.