Page - (000198) - in Knowledge and Networks

192 The electromobility initiative in Germany, launched in response to global warm- ing caused by high carbon emissions, and boosted in the aftermath of the global financial crisis that erupted in 2008, provides a suitable case for investigating the potential of platforming to unlock path dependencies that are likely to be more than technological in nature. Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) might be on the way to becoming the most serious challenger to the traditional fossil-fuel powertrain tech- nology driven by internal combustion engines. Even though significant technologi- cal progress is a crucial factor, it is not enough in the development of the electric car (Kirsch, 2000). Battery-charging infrastructure has to be built, new organizations created and existing ones adapted, intelligent traffic concepts developed, and new business models designed to pave the way for this technological alternative. All these technological and socioeconomic challenges are addressed in the correspond- ing policy initiative, the National Platform for Electromobility (NPE) set up by the federal German government in 2010. Involving all the relevant national actors, yet adopting a clear regional focus, it offers a framework for discerning the extent to which platforming can change an entrenched technological path at a regional level, that is, tightly intertwined with institutional and organizational path dependencies. At the very least, platform policies such as the NPE may be capable of opening new opportunities. We ask under what conditions platforming may be a suitable, if only a comple- mentary, strategy for regional path-breaking change. To answer this question, we first review the present state of theorizing on path dependence and path-breaking and locate the role of platform policies systematically within this effort, paying particular heed to regional knowledge-creation processes. We then summarize the emergence and development of the electromobility initiative in Germany, which has a strong regional focus, during the four and a half years from summer 2007 through early 2012. After describing our research setting, we explain our research design and methods. That section is followed by a presentation of our empirical insights from two metropolitan regions that differ significantly in their current knowledge resources and their dependence on the automotive industry: the region of Germany’s capital city, Berlin, which has little industrial production; and of Stuttgart, a core hub of Germany’s automobile production. We begin with the idea that platform policies may, under certain circumstances, contribute to breaking a technological, institutional, and/or organizational knowledge path, or may at least open new oppor- tunities. Our empirical insights lead us to the tentative conclusion that platforming may contribute to path-forming but not necessarily to path-breaking at a regional level. Our study contributes to the rising discourse on the possibilities and limitations of platforming as a potential “post-cluster” (Cooke, 2011, p. 307) regional policy approach with a particular focus on breaking or forming technological, institutional, and/or organizational paths in regions. With regard to the continuing emphasis on regional knowledge creation and exploitation, our inquiry contributes broadly to the knowledge-based theorizing of regional economic development and, thereby, also to popular evolutionary and institutional theorizing about regional development processes. J. Sydow and F. Koll