How does external environment impact emerging industrial development: An evolutionary development approach of the e-sports industry in China

To increase the understanding of how the external environment impact the local industrial development, this study builds a conceptual framework of industrial evolutionary development by integrating evolutionary and developmental theories from the perspective of evolutionary economic geography. This study emphasised the combination of two mechanisms. The first evolutionary mechanism consisting of variation, selection and retention, and the diversity within and between enterprise clusters serves as the starting point for evolution. The external environment selects and retains the most competitive enterprises under the mechanism of selection. The second developmental mechanism is the influence of the external environment on enterprises. The external environment screens and affects the development of firms at and across multiple levels, same level and across levels. Based on the case studies of the e-sports industry in China, this study finds that technological development has driven the transformation of the e-sports industry. Additionally, location cost, spatial proximity, local policy, urban strategy and national planning have been identified as crucial factors that influence the location choice of the e-sports industry. This study highlights the importance of paying more attention to environmental dynamics in the research and practice of industrial evolution.