Abstract
Literatures on industrial development have long accepted the product cycle notion that innovative products are first developed in advanced economies and only migrate to developing locales once products are fully mature and production processes are standardized. Through an analysis of the evolution of wind turbine and solar PV industries in China and Germany, this paper shows that the product cycle no longer explains global patterns of industrial development. Instead, I present evidence to show that collaborative processes of product development -- involving firms in both China and Germany -- were critical to bringing wind and solar sectors from niche production to mass manufacturing. These findings challenge central assumptions of literatures on industrial development. They also have implications for current trade disputes between China and the European Union, which have largely overlooked the tight integration of global wind and solar industries.
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