Internationalization as a strategy to overcome industry barriers—An assessment of the marine energy industry

New ventures in an emerging industry: access to and use of international resources

“…This is based on the fact that demand for wave and tidal energy solutions is assumed to be very global in nature, but also on the assumption that the firms in this emerging industry have a huge need for capital as well as specialized competencies from partners which may be difficult to find in local or national environments. Based on the case studies, we will be able to describe and analyse these issues more in detail and contribute with regard to what Løvdal and Neumann (2011) and Rasmussen et al (2012) describe as an understudied part of the INV literature.…”

“…Holmberg, Andersson et al (2011) show that for marine energy companies, the levels of soft funding and public support schemes are very different between nations because of the individual national policies and the nation's general economic level (Holmberg, Andersson, Bolund, & Strandanger, 2011). Some public grants demand local presence and activities by the companies, and there are indications that access to funding is so important that pre-commercial companies in fact are willing to change their management structure or relocate activity between countries in order to be in a more favourable position for receiving public funding as described by Løvdal and Neumann (2011).…”

“…In the INV literature, the access to financial resources is defined as a key challenge for early internationalization (Coviello & Munro, 1997;Løvdal & Neumann, 2011;Rennie, 1993), and earlier studies have demonstrated that when small firms are developing technology, sufficient financial resources in combination with access to external knowledge are critical (Jones, 2001;Kuemmerle, 2002). The challenge of accessing funding is likely to be an even greater hurdle for ventures in the pre-commercial phases still focusing on technology development without any income from sales.…”

“…These challenges are likely to be even greater for pre-commercial ventures in the marine energy industry where the process of developing technology from the initial idea to a fully commercial solution is complex, expensive and time-demanding. The marine energy industry experiences an ongoing technology battle (Løvdal & Neumann, 2011;Renewable-UK, 2012) where there is a diversified technology development process among firms and lack of a 'dominant design' (Anderson & Tushman, 1990). Thus, all the different technologies in the industry lead to few standard solutions available when supplementing the main technological system with additional subsystems.…”

Oceans of energy? The non-linear trajectory of the emerging wave energy technology

“…These are a mobile set, highly dependent on favourable policies, availability of infrastructures and of investors that enable them to endure the high costs of the sea level experimental projects (Løvdal and Neumann, 2011). The government, encouraged by national niche actors, decides to create a Pilot Zone for Wave Energy -i.e.…”