Policy Regimes, Shifts, and Networks of Innovation: The Experience of Photovoltaics in Japan

This paper examines the evolving patterns of expectations between networks of industry actors and looks at their role in shaping the evolution of a frontier industry. Many existing studies have examined the evolving network dynamics of frontier industries through bibliometric and patenting data (Murray 2002, Li et al. 2014, Walsh, Lee and Nagaoka 2016). This paper builds upon recent scholarship that has considered expectations as an important factor in shaping the trajectories of frontier industries. These studies elaborate on how expectations not only provide direction, momentum and legitimation of learning processes (Schot and Geels 2008), but also bind, mediate, and mobilise a heterogeneous network of industry actors with dissimilar interests (Borup et al. 2006, Alkemade and Suurs 2012).

This paper engages closely with the growing literature on strategic niche management and sociotechnical transitions (Geels and Raven 2006, Coenen et al. 2012, Smith and Raven 2012). In response to the often supply-driven analyses in innovation studies (Malerba 2002, Lundvall 2010), scholars of strategic niche management have focused on how interactions with actors and institutions in the broader sociotechnical system are crucial to the development of a successful niche. Using the experience of the Japanese photovoltaics industry, this research attempts to better appreciate how expectations facilitate or frustrate the transition of niche innovations toward a regime change. It considers the relationship between the often dissonant patterns of expectations among industry actors – such as government, industry, academia, and consumers – and the development of a vibrant niche.