No abstract

The aim of this paper is to transfer the innovation system (IS) approach to the microeconomic level, creating a conceptual framework which helps individual actors to explain, identify, and predict the origin of innovations. Based on the ongoing discussion about the applicability of boundedly rational search and, in particular, the metaphor of an opportunity landscape, the author has developed a conceptual framework for the origin of economic innovations, structured along three dimensions. First, the adjacent possible defines a narrow space of potential first-order combinations of exiting knowledge, which is the trajectory for the new developments in technology and science. Second, the adjacent feasible defines an area of expected cost reduction which enables the exploitation of the new technologies within a threshold. Finally, the adjacent acceptable represents a small area on the current edges of socially accepted behavior, which currently only innovators embrace, but soon will reach the early majority of adopters. It is, however, the moment when all three dimensions achieve an intersecting area, when the opportunity vacuum (OV) is created. The OV is a space, which strongly attracts innovation and often creates multiple inventions at the same time emerging independently. While this model is aimed at explaining the origin of economic innovations in retrospective, it can also be applied as a framing method to anticipate future economic novelty.

Due to rising urbanization, cities around the world are struggling with mobility and infrastructure problems. Electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, or short air taxis, can potentially offer a local emission-free and infrastructure conserving solution to these problems. The German Start-Up Volocopter has already proven the technical feasibility in their Demo Flight in Dubai 2017. The technology develops increasingly fast towards market readiness. Even though there are technical and legal challenges, however, the success of air taxis will depend upon the widespread acceptance of this service by consumers and society. The aim of this study is to understand consumers’ attitudes towards the technology and the factors that lead to either acceptance or rejection of air taxis.

No abstract

No abstract