Understanding Learning in Technological Trajectories: Combining Organizational Integration and Industrial Dynamics by

This paper argues that a cross fertilisation exercise combining the insights from neo-Schumpeterian and evolutionary economists work on industrial dynamics, with Lazonick’s organisational integration hypothesis, may offer the organisational integration hypothesis some valuable insights. Namely insights on firstly what a firm or an organisation must be able to integrate to become and stay competitive and secondly how this differs across sectors. By employing Pavitt’s sectoral innovation taxonomy as a starting point, the paper demonstrates the sectoral differences related to the underlying technological trajectories and the learning regimes within sectors. These sectoral differences relate to the locus of learning within sectors that are essential in Lazonick’s organisational integration hypothesis. It is also argued that the cross fertilisation exercise offers insights that can be useful for the neo- Schumpeterian and evolutionary scholars in the elaboration on both the theory of the firm, and on industrial dynamics. Where neo-Scumpeterian and evolutionary scholars mainly have focussed on technology; the underlying technological knowledge base and the path dependence related to technology, the exercise in this paper leads to suggest a broadening of the focus. A broadening that includes a focus on the cumulativeness in developing along a specific learning regime. Applying such a broadened focus is argued to be useful in discussing firm integration, disintegration and firms ’ product diversification. On the industry level it is useful when discussing the emergence of industries and the spin off of new industries from existing industries