23 Simon Bolten Technische Universität München Fakultät für Wirtschaftswissenschaften Fürstenrieder Straße 317 81377 München Germany Simon.Bolten@mytum.de www.tim.wi.tum.de www.iwes.fraunhofer.de
What are the Success Factors for Profiting from Innovation in the
Emerging Airborne Wind Energy Industry?
A Competition Analysis in the Face of Innovation
Simon BoltenTechnische Universität München, Fakultät für Wirtschaftswissenschaften
In the emerging airborne wind energy (AWE) industry most research is focusing on engineering problems and evalu-ating different design concepts. Little attention has been focused on technology and innovation management ques-tions such as ‘Who will be most likely to profit from AWE innovation?’ This thesis aims to address this gap of knowl-edge, and to analyze the competitive environment of air-borne wind energy systems (AWES) using David J. Teece’s (1986) theory on ‘profiting from innovation’. The industry
specific variables: appropriability regime, industry life cy-cle phase and complementary assets will be examined. To allow for this analysis, data will be collected through a sur-vey with 81 AWE stakeholders. The findings help to deter-mine a company’s competitive position and help companies in appropriating rents from their innovation. Furthermore, the findings allow for solving a ‘management puzzle’ result-ing from the need to decide when to build or contract differ-ent complemdiffer-entary assets.
