Abstract:
Industry convergence—the merger of previously unrelated industries—is a
model that has had a strong influence on various industries and received substantial
attention among practitioners over the past years. Despite this, industry
convergence has received little attention in the field of unmanned aircraft.
As the unmanned aircraft industry is still in the infancy stage, exploring the
industrial status may contribute to the technology’s body of knowledge and
may be useful for entrepreneurial decision making. Thus, this research paper
investigates the degree to which the unmanned aerial vehicle sector represents
an example of industry convergence and predicts the consequences built upon
it. The investigation is based on the convergence theory and evidence from
the unmanned aerial systems industry is provided to support theoretical
foundations. Conclusions show that unmanned aerial technology is converged
to an undefined extent and the author calls for further related empirical research.
