Run with the hare and hunt with the hounds: Hybrid technologies' multifaceted role in the transition from incumbent to emerging technologies

Abstract

This paper investigates the challenge of using hybrid technologies to accelerate the transition from incumbent to emerging technologies. It delves into the micro-dynamics of technology strategies: exploitation (a passive approach), exploration (a proactive approach), and a balanced exploitation-exploration stance during the transition. Based on technological innovation system (TIS) and Lotka-Volterra models, a system dynamics (SD) technology interaction framework is applied to conventional internal combustion engine vehicles, hybrid electric vehicles, and battery electric vehicles in US market. The SD modelling provides a platform for experimenting with policy mixes by analysing the timing, scale, scope, and sequence of interventions. Several scenarios are explored, such as landscape pressure, predator-prey dynamics, niche- and incumbent-favoured relationships, and sociotechnical transition, spanning from 1985 to a forward-looking 2070. Findings reveal that hybrid technologies play a multifaceted role: as an exploratory solution accelerating technology development dynamics in emerging technologies and as an exploitative solution slowing down market development dynamics in emerging technologies, and hardly inhibiting technology and market development dynamics in incumbent technologies. Moreover, findings confirm the traditional sailing ship effect—establishing a causal link between the emergence of new technologies and the active and systematic enhancement of incumbent technologies—while also uncovering a non-traditional sailing ship effect in the form of ‘spillovers.’ These spillovers enable firms to manage uncertainties and timing in transitions by orchestrating sociotechnical ‘spillbacks’ and ‘spillforwards’ between emerging and incumbent technologies via hybrid technologies. To effectively accelerate transitions using hybrid technologies, the study recommends adopting a sociotechnical policy approach that simultaneously promotes niche creation and regime destabilisation.