How Knowledge-Based Dynamic Capabilities Help to Avoid and Cope with Path Dependencies in the Electric Mobility Sector

Abstract

Companies involved in the electric mobility sector such as car manufacturers, battery producers or infrastructure providers are confronted with risks of technological and institutional path dependencies and resulting lock-in situations. One approach that might enable these companies to avoid and cope with such lock-ins is the idea of knowledge-based dynamic capabilities. Accordingly, companies need to be able to replicate their organizational resources through knowledge codification and transfer, and to reconfigure their resources through knowledge abstraction and absorption. This chapter reveals exemplary effects that result from such knowledge-based activities on the abilities to maintain or increase their technological and strategic flexibility. Accordingly, companies in the electric mobility sector have e.g. the chance to reduce risks of path dependent developments through transferring their knowledge internally and between each other in order to trigger a combination of knowledge resources, which in turn increase the varieties of their decision alternatives.