京都大学 大学院経済学研究科・経済学部

“Unlocking Generality: Resurfacing Uncertainty Across Applications of the Lithium-ion Battery”　David A. Kirsch

Abstract:
Studies of industry emergence have often generated insights from empirical contexts with a one-to-one correspondence between a technology and its application. In parallel, studies of general-purpose technologies (GPTs) have documented the economic impact and versatility of technologies with broad downstream applications, although these studies often abstract away from the endogenous and gradual process through which a single technology underpins multiple downstream markets, in practice assuming that “generality” is an intrinsic, ex ante observable attribute of a given technology. To address the research gap at this intersection, this study leverages the applicability of lithium-ion batteries in multiple applications: consumer electronics, electric vehicles, space missions, and utility grids. Using a longitudinal, multi-level, single-case analysis, this study proposes a conceptual framework about the impediments to the diffusion of a single technology to multiple applications, including application-specific uncertainties that resurface in each application, and their system-wide implications for commercial viability at each technology-application nexus. The conclusion considers the circumstances under which these impediments and associated investments may generalize to other “potential” GPTs.

Brief Bio:
David A. Kirsch is Associate Professor at the Robert H. Smith School of Business and the College of Information Studies (by courtesy) at the University of Maryland, College Park. His research focuses on the intersection of problems of innovation and entrepreneurship, technological and business failure, and industry emergence and evolution and has appeared in leading management, strategy and entrepreneurship journals, including Management Science, the Journal of Financial Economics, Strategic Management Journal, Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Academy of Management Discoveries and the Journal of Business Venturing. He has a long-standing interest in the preservation and use of digital business records, especially large-scale organizational email corpora. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Library of Congress, the Alred P. Sloan Foundation, the Arts & Humanities Research Council of the U.K, and the Mellon Foundation. Formally trained as a historian of modern technology, Kirsch has also published two books, one on the history of the electric car (_The Electric Vehicle and the Burden of History_(Rutgers University Press, 2000)) and a second on the general problem of speculation around technology in financial markets (_Bubbles and Crashes: The Boom and Bust of Technological Innovation_ (Stanford University Press, 2019)). In 2020 and 2022, he was a Visiting Fellow at Brasenose College, Oxford.

 

“Industry Dynamics and the Historian’s Lens: Method, Theory, and the Oxford Handbook”　Takafumi Kurosawa

Brief Bio:
Takafumi Kurosawa is Professor and Chair in Economic Policy at the Graduate School of Economics, Kyoto University in Kyoto, Japan. His research analyzes industrial clusters, industrial competitiveness and industrial policies from a historical and comparative perspective, examining both European and East Asian cases. Between 2012 and 2016, he directed a large-scale international research project on the long-term competitiveness of industries in South East Asia, Europe and North America. He is a co-editor, with B. Bowens and P.-Y. Donzé, of Industries and Global Competition: A History of Business Beyond Borders (Routledge, 2017)

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