Effects of incumbency and R & D affiliation on the legitimation of electric vehicle technologies

Non-economic forces distort "rational" competitions among emerging technolo gies and associated trajectories. For example, incumbent and credibly affil iated firms use their legitimacy to promote their technological preferences and denigrate the efforts of less legitimate firms. This article reports r esults of a study which examined these dynamics in the competition among em erging electrochemical innovations aimed at the electric vehicle industry. It also presents the first-known use of the technology forecasting techniqu e called morphological analysis in business academia. Similarities and diff erences between media representations of innovation activities, versus actu al industry-wide developments, were found to have theoretical and practitio ner implications. It was found that (1) incumbent firms were not participat ing meaningfully, rendering that variable largely moot; (2) effects of R&D affiliation were marginally significant; that while (3) performance advanta ges and disadvantages were reported in the media much more frequently than respective cost-price advantages and disadvantages, that (4) the relative p erformance advantages and disadvantages of competing innovations were repor ted in a balanced way, but that (5) the pattern of reports concerning cost- price was unbalanced in a way that favored the dominant design plus relativ ely modest departures from it. The overall interpretation indicated that re latively modest types of innovations were "winning" the early battle in a s ubtle but important way, despite representing a trajectory that was not cer tain to be the most rational, from a performance and/or cost-price focus. ( C) 1999 Elsevier Science Inc.