{"title":"New Emerging Industries and Alternative Pathways into Global Value Chains: the Case of Estonian Automated Mobility and Delivery Industry","authors":"Egert Juuse, Erkki Karo","doi":"10.1007/s13132-024-02236-w","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>Global value chains (GVC) framework provides an analytical tool to unravel development and upgrading trajectories for businesses from catching-up economies. At the same time, the catching-up literature tends to portray the upgrading in emerging economies as a gradual and linear process. Considering the digital transformation-driven trends in global value chains (GVCs) and the rise of new emerging industries, we show how small start-ups from catching-up economies can redefine the traditional pathways for entering and upgrading in GVCs. Based on three cases from the automated mobility and delivery industry in Estonia, we show how small start-up companies can achieve rapid global outreach not only via functional but also product-related, inter-sectoral, and end-market upgrading by specializing in novel niche value propositions and by building business models around digital platforms to reap the benefits from the network effects. As a result, the analysed companies have not faced established and occupied value chains, where latecomer manufacturers tend to enter, but have managed to shape and control their value chains by directing the developments on local as well as international levels, and paradoxically, without much policy support.</p>","PeriodicalId":47435,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Knowledge Economy","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.0000,"publicationDate":"2024-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of the Knowledge Economy","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s13132-024-02236-w","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Global value chains (GVC) framework provides an analytical tool to unravel development and upgrading trajectories for businesses from catching-up economies. At the same time, the catching-up literature tends to portray the upgrading in emerging economies as a gradual and linear process. Considering the digital transformation-driven trends in global value chains (GVCs) and the rise of new emerging industries, we show how small start-ups from catching-up economies can redefine the traditional pathways for entering and upgrading in GVCs. Based on three cases from the automated mobility and delivery industry in Estonia, we show how small start-up companies can achieve rapid global outreach not only via functional but also product-related, inter-sectoral, and end-market upgrading by specializing in novel niche value propositions and by building business models around digital platforms to reap the benefits from the network effects. As a result, the analysed companies have not faced established and occupied value chains, where latecomer manufacturers tend to enter, but have managed to shape and control their value chains by directing the developments on local as well as international levels, and paradoxically, without much policy support.
期刊介绍:
In the context of rapid globalization and technological capacity, the world’s economies today are driven increasingly by knowledge—the expertise, skills, experience, education, understanding, awareness, perception, and other qualities required to communicate, interpret, and analyze information. New wealth is created by the application of knowledge to improve productivity—and to create new products, services, systems, and process (i.e., to innovate). The Journal of the Knowledge Economy focuses on the dynamics of the knowledge-based economy, with an emphasis on the role of knowledge creation, diffusion, and application across three economic levels: (1) the systemic ''meta'' or ''macro''-level, (2) the organizational ''meso''-level, and (3) the individual ''micro''-level. The journal incorporates insights from the fields of economics, management, law, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and political science to shed new light on the evolving role of knowledge, with a particular emphasis on how innovation can be leveraged to provide solutions to complex problems and issues, including global crises in environmental sustainability, education, and economic development. Articles emphasize empirical studies, underscoring a comparative approach, and, to a lesser extent, case studies and theoretical articles. The journal balances practice/application and theory/concepts.