technological leapfrogging
Recently Published Documents


TOTAL DOCUMENTS

32
(FIVE YEARS 10)

H-INDEX

10
(FIVE YEARS 0)

2021 ◽  
pp. 172-192
Author(s):  
Keun Lee

Chapter 8 explores how Huawei was able to emerge as the leader in the telecommunications system sector, overtaking the incumbent Swedish giant Ericsson. It answers this question by focusing on whether a latecomer firm trying to catch up uses technologies similar to or different from those of the forerunners. The study investigated patents by Huawei and Ericsson and found that Huawei relied on Ericsson as a knowledge source in its early days but subsequently reduced this reliance and increased its self-citation ratio to become more independent. The results of mutual citations, common citations, and self-citations provided strong evidence that Huawei caught up with or overtook Ericsson by taking a different technological trajectory. Huawei developed its technologies by relying on more recent and scientific knowledge; in terms of citations to scientific articles and citation lags, Huawei extensively explored basic research and up-to-date technologies to accomplish its technological catch-up. This study suggests that leapfrogging by exploring a new technological path is a possible and viable catch-up strategy for a latecomer. Moreover, Huawei’s case re-confirms the hypothesis that catch-up in technological capabilities tends to precede that in market share. Huawei overtook Ericsson in terms of quantity and quality of patents before annual sales. In summary, the results suggest that Huawei’s catch-up with Ericsson in the telecommunications equipment market is owing not only to its cost advantage, the large domestic market, or the Chinese government’s support but also more importantly to its technological leapfrogging based on its technological strength and independence.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Keun Lee

Economic catch-up is defined in the literature as the narrowing of a latecomer firm’s or country’s gap vis-à-vis a leading country or firm. However, latecomers do not simply follow the advanced countries’ path of technological development; rather, they sometimes do something new, skip certain stages, or create a new path that is different from those of the forerunners. Although the path-following strategy based on the initial factor–cost advantages helps in the gradual catch-up of late entrants’ market shares, a sharp increase in the latecomers’ market shares is likely to occur when a shift in technologies or demand conditions occurs. Such a shift is utilized by the path creation or stage skipping of latecomers, both of which can be considered a case of leapfrogging. That is, leapfrogging is a latecomer doing something differently from forerunners, often ahead of them. Technological leapfrogging is a precondition for success in technological catch-up or in closing the gap with incumbents in terms of technological capabilities. Then, such technological catch-up in several sectors may lead to economic catch-up in terms of the growth of per capita GDP or economic power. This eventual linkage from technological leapfrogging to economic catch-up via technological catch-up is what we mean by the title of this book. We focus on this main hypothesis with the Chinese experience in this book. One conclusion from this book is that China’s successful rise as a global industrial power has been due to its strategy of technological leapfrogging, which has enabled it to move beyond the middle-income trap and possibly the Thucydides trap, although at a slower speed.


Author(s):  
Keun Lee

After a miraculous economic growth, spurred by the Beijing Consensus, China is now facing a slowdown. This book deals with the interesting issue of the middle-income trap—the phenomenon of the rapidly growing economy of a country stagnating at the middle-income level—in the context of China. It also discusses China’s limitations and future prospects, especially after the onset of a new “cold war” between China and the US, and in particular whether it would fall into the “Thucydides trap,” the conflict between a rising power and the existing hegemon. This book plays around three key terms, the Beijing Consensus, the middle-income trap, and the Thucydides trap, and applies a Schumpeterian approach to these concepts. It also conducts a comparative analysis examining China from an “economic catch-up” perspective. Economic catch-up starts with learning from and imitating a forerunner, but a successful catch-up requires leapfrogging, which implies a latecomer doing something different from, and often ahead of, a forerunner. Technological leapfrogging may lead to technological catch-up, which means reducing the technological gap, and then to economic catch-up in living standards and economic size. This linkage between technological and economic catch-up corresponds exactly with a similar linkage between the Beijing Consensus and escaping (or not) the middle-income and Thucydides traps. The book concludes that China’s successful rise as a global industrial power has been due to its strategy of technological leapfrogging, which has enabled it to move beyond the middle-income trap and possibly the Thucydides trap, although at a slower speed.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pan Hu ◽  
Ying Wang ◽  
Tao Feng ◽  
Yuxin Duan

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate three issues: how does an innovative search (local search and boundary-spanning search) impact firm innovation performance of latecomers; how does capability reconfiguration (capability evolution and capability substitution) mediates the relationship between innovative search and firm innovation performance; and how does the technological leapfrogging process (initial stage, following stage, synchronization stage and leading stage) moderate the relationship between capability reconfiguration and firm innovation performance. Design/methodology/approach A “resource-capability-performance” theoretical framework was developed to explore the relationships between local/boundary-spanning search, capability reconfiguration and firm innovation performance. The data were collected by sending out surveys to managers and employees in various industries in mainland China. These hypotheses were tested using structural equation models and hierarchical regressions. Findings The results showed that: innovative search has a direct causal relationship to capability reconfiguration; local search and boundary-spanning search are conducive to improve the innovation performance of latecomers; the impact of local search and boundary-spanning search on innovation performance is realized through the completion of mediating role of capability reconfiguration; there are differences in the path of local search and boundary-spanning search affecting the capability reconfiguration of enterprise innovation performance; and the relationship between innovative search, capability reconfiguration and enterprise innovation performance evolves with the enterprise in different stages of technological leapfrogging. Originality/value This study explores the relationship and the path of innovative search to firm innovation performance and analyzes the path difference between local search and boundary-spinning search, which enriches the research of organizational search and enterprise innovation. This paper reveals the whole path of innovative search affecting innovation performance, discusses the important role of capability reconfiguration and makes incremental contributions to dynamic capability theory. It studies the evolution of innovative search on innovation performance under the background of technological leapfrogging, which provides a new perspective for the study of organizational search and capability-based theory.


Author(s):  
Keun Lee

Latecomer economies are firms which may be able to leapfrog older vintages of technology, and make pre-emptive investments in emerging technologies to catch up with advanced countries in new markets. Leapfrogging can be defined as latecomers trying something different ahead of the forerunners, thereby leaping over them. The answer to the question whether the fourth industrial revolution represents a new window of opportunity for leapfrogging or whether it constitutes a source of further risks for latecomers is that this depends entirely on the country’s response and readiness, that is, its industrial policy, digital literacy, the skill and education level, as well as domestic market size and position in the GVC. Policy recommendations for leapfrogging can also be made for different types of firms, such as incumbents and start-ups. The former comprises three types of firms, namely leaders, followers, and laggards. Path-creating type leapfrogging is more likely to take place in start-ups because they have invested the least in existing technologies or business models. Leader or follower type firms in emerging economies tend to have some experience with technology and absorptive capacity and are thus likely to be in a position to skip one or several stages, while managing the risks associated with leapfrogging. Lastly, laggard firms should not attempt pre-mature leapfrogging but should first build some absorptive capacity in their niche area and upgrade by moving up the higher end of the GVC.


2020 ◽  
pp. 002224292096791
Author(s):  
Deepa Chandrasekaran ◽  
Gerard J. Tellis ◽  
Gareth M. James

When faced with new technologies, the incumbents’ dilemma is whether to embrace the new technology, stick with their old technology, or invest in both. The entrants’ dilemma is whether to target a niche and avoid incumbent reaction or target the mass market and incur the incumbent’s wrath. The solution is knowing to what extent the new technology cannibalizes the old one or whether both technologies may exist in tandem. The authors develop a generalized model of the diffusion of successive technologies, which allows for the rate of disengagement from the old technology to differ from the rate of adoption of the new. A low rate of disengagement indicates people hold both technologies (coexistence), whereas a high rate of disengagement indicates they let go of the old technology in favor of the new (cannibalization). The authors test the validity of the model using a simulation of individual-level data. They apply the model to 660 technology pairs and triplets–country combinations from 108 countries spanning 70 years. Data include both penetration and sales plus important case studies. The model helps managers estimate evolving proportions of segments that play different roles in the competition between technologies and predict technological leapfrogging, cannibalization, and coexistence.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
John Maphephe ◽  
Rishidaw Balkaran ◽  
Surendra Thakur

This article presents essential tools that can help to devise a standard set of requirements and attributes for any form of electoral technology adopted across the continent. A number of countries in the southern African region have turned to a variety of technological solutions in a bid to make elections more efficient and cost-effective and to strengthen stakeholder trust at each stage of the electoral cycle. Africa has become a testing ground for technological leapfrogging. Election management bodies and Southern African Development Community observer teams are in the spotlight, but this leaves more questions about electoral capacity – problems that sometimes extend to the top of the African Union, which means that the African Union should adopt an incremental technological approach when dealing with electoral observations, capacity-building and political problem-solving across the whole continent. However, in many cases, the technology does not necessarily improve trust in the process or deal with the all problems with elections it was intended to resolve. As a result, concerns about the sustainability of electoral technology remain unanswered. The information for this study was gathered from an online search of secondary academic literature on electoral system management, published reports, legal mandates and official websites of the election management bodies studied. The lessons of the past decade show that technology has great potential for strengthening electoral integrity, but its introduction and use must be grounded in well-designed policies, surrounded by adequate safeguards and supported by legislation that is adequate to deal with the issues that it raises. The article attempts to assess emerging trends and to speculate on how they may affect the electoral process over the next decade. There is a need to examine how recent technological advancements could contribute further to enhancing electoral integrity and participation and how they can be integrated into the process in a sustainable manner.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document