Industry Life Cycle, Knowledge Generation and Technological Networks

Abstract

Industry Life Cycle theories have launched a vigorous research program studying the forces governing the evolution of industrial structures (Abernathy and Utterback, 1978; Utterback and Abernathy, 1975). As such, they challenge the traditional approach of industrial organization by underlying the intrinsically changing nature of industries. Evidently, industry structures evolve on the basis of market selection. However, as technologies and competencies, mobilized in a given production chain do change, firms ought to devote additional resources to learning and eventually to mastering new knowledge. Less efficient actors are not only those that fail in implementing their own production function in the short run. They may also be those that fail in modifying it in the long run (March, 1991).