Data-Driven Decision Making in Battery Technology – How to Compete in Global Battery Industry?

Battery technology is regarded as a crucial key technology for the energy transition and thus a sustainable future, as batteries can store and distribute renewable energy to cover electricity demand when energy sources such as sun and wind are not available. They also promote fossil fuel independency and play an important role in fostering zero-emission mobility. Driven by the urge to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations and the Paris Climate Agreement, the battery industry is gaining increasing global interest in society, politics, industry and research. Strategic smart decisions for a sustainable and efficient resource allocation are particularly relevant in this context and are considered a key challenge for organizations to succeed through strong innovation in the competitive battery industry. Especially against the increasing competitive pressure for comparatively high-cost and heavily regulated industrial locations, such as Europe, due to the billion-dollar inflation reduction act in the U.S. and the resulting duty of policymakers to react, strategic decisions in the battery industry are coming more and more into focus. Data-driven research is of great importance for strategic decision making in battery technology. Given the enormous amount of Big Data available today, data science analyses are essential to identify and visualize relevant insights in terms of hidden patterns, relationships, and trends. Policy makers, executives, and R&D managers benefit from the advantages of data-driven approaches, as they are thus able to make informed decisions, enabling them to achieve the goals of the energy transition by advancing the development of battery technology. Therefore, supporting strategic decision-making in the battery industry using data-based analytics has high potential to strengthen the competitiveness and innovation power of organizations in the battery industry, as well as to empower their strategic direction, so that the research domain is also gaining increasing relevance and attention in academia. This study addresses the topic of data-driven strategic decision making in battery technology by pursuing the following research questions: Which data-driven research studies on strategic decision making in battery technology exist so far? Which gaps for future research can be identified along the battery design hierarchy in this area? Which geographic regions are regarded as technology leaders in the global battery industry in different technology areas? Which scientific recommendations have been identified in the literature for policy makers, researchers, and managers in battery technology? In a first step, a novel AI-based search methodology using machine learning and text mining was applied to identify 61 relevant publications on data-driven strategic decision making in battery technology at the interface of electrochemistry, data science and business/politics, which were structured and reviewed for further analysis within a next step. By conducting a bibliographic analysis using network analysis and descriptive statistics, to the best of the authors' knowledge, for the first time an overview of the entire research field of data-driven decision making in battery technology was provided and trends in intensity, geographic distribution, and knowledge diffusion of the research field were examined. This is an incrementally expanding, emerging research area that has attracted immense interest, particularly in recent years, as evidenced by a significant increase in research intensity. The USA could be identified as the most research-intensive country in this field, followed by Germany and Spain. In a following analysis of potential research gaps for future research, it became clear that the application and technology levels, especially electric vehicles and lithium-ion batteries (LIB) have been the focus of the scientific literature, whereas battery components and materials, especially separators and safety devices, offer potential for future research. As part of a geostrategic analysis, it was possible to identify the technology leaders for each battery application, technology, component, and material. Asian countries (China, Japan, South Korea) and the USA tend to be the leaders in many technologies, but a differentiated view of individual technology segments provides insight that European countries, such as Germany and France, are also leaders in topics such as LIB electrolytes and certain LIB anode materials. In addition, the science-based recommendations were extracted from the literature at the application, technology, component, and material levels. Finally, implications for policy, industry and research could be derived from the combined consideration of the geostrategic analysis and the science-based literature recommendations. The analytical "outside of the box" research approach to efficient and sustainable resource allocation in battery technology presented in this research paper supports policy makers, managers and researchers in strategic decision making regarding technological areas and business strategies to strengthen the competitiveness and innovation performance of organizations in the battery industry.