Economic globalization and the modularization of value chains increasingly challenge longheld conceptual models explaining the spatial evolution of industries. This paper seeks to reinterpret early industry life cycle dynamics by disintegrating an industry's value chain into upstream, core and downstream parts and characterizing each part according to its underlying global innovation system (GIS) configuration. We distinguish between firms in parts of the value chain that depend on formalized, science-based innovation and cater for globally standardized mass markets ('footloose' GIS) and firms in parts of the value chain that rely on spatially more stable GIS structures, in which either the innovation activities or the valuation dynamics (or both) depend on spatial embedding in given territorial contexts. Our hypothesis is that firms which occupy parts of the value chain with footloose GIS characteristics will have shorter survival times than firms which operate in spatially more stable GIS types. Demandside policies will accordingly produce stronger competitive advantages for firms operating in GIS with spatially stable valuation structures. The empirical context of our study is the solar photovoltaics (PV) industry. We analyze market entry and exit of 129 German and 127 Japanese PV firms from 1960 to 2016 using a Cox Proportional Hazards model. The results support the hypotheses that firm survival and policy effects depend on a value chain part's underlying GIS configuration.

Industrial evolution prompts firms to enter into R&D collaborations to ensure competitiveness and substantial growth. This study expands the industry life cycle concept to include the extent and types of R&D collaborations. I analyze 6581 R&D collaborations by 60 manufacturers in the German photovoltaics (PV) industry from 1980 to 2016 using a negative binomial regression model. The results indicate that the number of R&D collaborations is higher in the post-shakeout than in the pre-shakeout period of an industry. While this is particularly true for science-based R&D collaborations with universities and public research organizations, market-based R&D collaborations evolve from predominantly competitors before an industry’s shakeout to suppliers and customers after a shakeout has occurred.

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