Dynamics of a policy-driven market: The co-evolution of technological innovation systems for solar photovoltaics in China and Germany

The rise of Chinese solar energy firms has taken many experts bysurprise. German policy makers and researchers alike had suggested that the country's ambitious deployment policies wouldtranslate into a competitive advantage for the German solar photovoltaics industry. This paper argues that these expectations restedon an outdated model of the international diffusion of innovation. Building on the technological innovation system (TIS) frameworkand the related system functions approach, the paper thus proposesa new approach for capturing the global dynamics of innovationand industrial development in emerging technology fields. Focusing on a period of dynamic growth in the field of crystalline- basedPV technologies, the paper highlights how a set of dynamic andmutual inter-dependencies between an industrialized country (i.e. Germany) and an emerging economy (i.e. China) have driven thedevelopment and diffusion of technology in the field. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B. V.