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• We develop a framework to tease out the coevolution between the technological innovation system (TIS) and the policymaking process of certain green technologies. • Policy change steered by TIS development can happen in 2 ways: policymakers may observe changes in TIS functionality and adjust policies; other TIS proponents may leverage on TIS dynamics to influence policy mixes for their benefits. • We apply the framework empirically in a case study of the new energy vehicle battery industry in China. In recent decades, the technological innovation systems (TIS) framework has been applied to the study of technology development and diffusion. While policy is considered a key element of TIS analysis, less attention has been paid to the influence of TIS dynamics on policymaking. To better understand the coevolution between TIS and policies, this paper develop an analytical framework to highlight the coevolution between TIS dynamics and policymaking. The framework underlines not only the influence of policies on TIS functionality, but also that changes in TIS functionality may in turn feed back into policymaking: policymakers may observe changes in TIS functionality and adjust policies to account for this, but changes in TIS functionality may also have implications for the ability of TIS actors to influence policymaking. Empirically, we study the new energy vehicle battery (NEVB) industry in China since the early 2000s. In the case of China's NEVB industry, an increasingly strong and complicated coevolutionary relationship between the focal TIS and relevant policies at different levels of abstraction can be observed. Overall, we argue that more research is needed to better understand the agency side of how TIS development leads to changes in policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the case of a Chinese firm that has upgraded to lead firm position in the global biomass power plant industry mainly through acquisitions of technological frontier firms in Denmark. Sustaining the lead firm position was, however, challenged by difficulties in developing innovative capability. Drawing on the literature on (i) firm-level technological capability and (ii) knowledge transfer in international acquisitions, we explain the reasons for insufficient innovative capability building. Based on these empirical findings, we suggest maintaining the existing upgrading framework but applying it analytically in a more flexible manner that avoids linearity, hierarchy and segmentation while stressing the co-existence of and inter-relationships between the different types of upgrading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary The voluminous literature on industrial catching-up in Southeast Asian countries has regularly argued that successful catching-up largely depended on a committed state, which orchestrated industry development with a relatively uniform set of policies, including R&D support, subsidies, trade restrictions, and local content requirements. In contrast, recent contributions from the technology lifecycle literature have argued that policies should be tailored to differing technological characteristics in industries for mass-produced standardized goods, complex engineered products, and—as we argue—complex product systems (CoPS). In this paper, we extend this argument by introducing a set of separate policy mixes for each industry type, which appears most capable of providing the key resources required for catching-up: knowledge, market access, financial investment and technology legitimacy. This framework is used to analyze catching-up patterns in China’s wind, solar PV, and biomass power plant industries, drawing mainly on policy documents and 106 interviews with key industry actors. We find that traditional top-down catching-up policies played a decisive role in the development of China’s wind industry, but were of limited importance in the early solar PV industry, and resulted only in a limited period of rapid growth in the biomass power plant industry. The relative progress achieved in these three industries is not related to top-down policy guidance alone, but also to private sector initiative, international interdependencies, and flexibility in adapting policy mixes to each industry’s technological characteristics. These results suggest that policy makers in newly industrializing countries (NICs) should avoid drafting generic sector plans, but should tailor plans to individual industries, and respond to changing policy support needs as technological capacities and global competitiveness develop. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]