Mergers and acquisitions, knowledge base and technological trajectories. An exploratory study in the wind energy sector

Ignacio Oscar Cretini, Verónica Robert and Darío Vázquez

Innovation and Development, 2025, vol. 15, issue 2, 335-361

Abstract: The wind energy sector has increased its technological complexity for the last 20 years, with new technological and convergent domains like advanced materials, complex simulation, and artificial intelligence. In this context, mergers, and acquisitions (M&A) have become a key channel for companies in the sector to absorb new knowledge and develop complementary capabilities. The aim of this article is to trace the recent trajectory of the sector’s knowledge base and to analyze the role of M&A, specially of New Technology Based Firms in the generation of new capabilities through knowledge recombination. Using co-occurrence networks on a unique database of 1,299 companies in the wind sector and their acquired companies, we developed a methodological approach to investigate the trajectory of the wind sector at a global level. The empirical analysis verifies that acquisitions belonging to ‘unrelated’ sectors contribute significantly to the diversification and complexification of the sector’s knowledge base over time.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/2157930X.2024.2350829 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:riadxx:v:15:y:2025:i:2:p:335-361

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/riad20

DOI: 10.1080/2157930X.2024.2350829

Access Statistics for this article

Innovation and Development is currently edited by K J Joseph (Editor-in-chief), Cristina Chaminade, Gabriela Dutrénit, Judith Sutz, Tim Turpin and Susan Cozzens

More articles in Innovation and Development from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().