An Innovation Trajectory in an Emerging Industry Under a Strategic Niche-Management Perspective

In the cultivation of emerging industry, industries are faced with two bottlenecks—(1) the “Death Valley” from R&D to the market and (2) “path dependence and lock-in”—under the existing socio-technical regime, and industries must overcome these bottleneck to achieve further development. From the view of strategic-niche management (SNM), the innovation trajectory of emerging industries is through niche construction and optimizing a plan to obtain their ecological inheritance and a multilevel-perspective (MLP) interaction within and between niche innovation, the socio-technical regime, and the socio-technical landscape. This much be done to promote the first transition, i.e., from technology niche to market niche to cross “Death Valley,” as well as the second transition, i.e., the one from market niche to paradigm niche to break through path dependence and lock-in.