The cumulative dissertation combines three excellent empirical research papers on the emergence and diffusion of new technologies with a special focus on international industrial dynamics in the solar industry. Ann Hipp has already published one of the papers entitled "Firm survival in complex value chains and global innovation systems: Evidence from solar photovoltaics" in the A-journal "Research Policy".

Ann Hipp studied economics at the TU Dresden, completed research stays at the ifo Institute and the Leibniz Institute for Economic Research Halle (IWH), was a research assistant at the University of Mannheim and a member of the junior research group "Knowledge and Technology Transfer" headed by Matthias Geisler at the TU Dresden.  Since June 2019 Ann Hipp has been working as a research assistant (postdoc) in the joint project Mod-Block-GDR in the working group of Jutta Günther at the University of Bremen. In this project she is working on productivity analyses of regions and sectors in an East-West comparison within an evolutionary economics framework.

We congratulate Ann Hipp on her excellent doctoral thesis and wish her continued scientific success!