World development is at a critical turning point. Globalisation has become ever more impactful. At the same time, we see a new long term industrial development cycle coming into full swing that builds on Information and Communications Technology while societies all over the world have to cope with sustainability challenges. These changes lead to a situation where industrial leadership may rapidly shift from one country to another. Europe 2020 reckoned these challenges under its Flagship Initiatives, in particular “An industrial policy for the globalisation era’’. Drawing on scholarship from the field of Innovation Studies, GLOTRAINS aims to make major contributions to the emerging global innovation system frameworks, combining literatures on industrial catch-up cycles, shifts in global leadership and environmental sustainability transitions. More specifically, the project aims at further elaborating the Innovation System framework to encompass a globalised and dynamic perspective, while asking whether and how national industrial policy can still play a decisive role. Empirically, this project analyzes the global competition of the solar photovoltaic industry. The national competence of countries in the solar photovoltaic industry is compared relatively to their prior competence in the semiconductor industry to understand the industrial dynamics that underpin the global transition process from standardized mass-produced sectors towards more valuation-based cleantech sectors.
The findings of GLOTRAINS show that rapid developing countries like China could potentially leapfrog incumbent countries in key global industries in the emerging green era as they find strategies to proactively create values for new products and services, create new market demands, create new directions for technological changes, and reshape socio-technical configurations. This is especially insightful to develop new concepts of how developing countries may endogenize windows of opportunity in the green era. On the other hand, middle-income trapped countries like Malaysia who are still primarily manufacturing-based in industries like the solar photovoltaic should find new positioning in the global value chains. This is especially crucial for developing countries that aim to break out of the vicious industrial catch-up cycles that do not lead the countries to high income-level status.
