Justin Yifu Lin is the director of the China Centre for Economic Research at Peking University.

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Lin, Justin, and Marie examined the semi-conductor industry, where the initial reliance on vacuum tubes was replaced by bipolar technology, which in turn was replaced by complementary metal-oxide semiconductors (CMOS).

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However, Professors Lin Jiang and Marie Thursby from Georgia Tech and Justin Tan from York University discovered that there are some exceptions to this rule, and some incumbents do manage to be inventors during the stage of technological dirsruption.

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