Research on “modularity” has made an important contribution to the study of technical change and economic institutions. It demonstrates that progress in the division of labor in design (technical modularity) has created new opportunities for the organization of firms beyond vertical...

The bulk of the global innovative effort takes place in 5 countries: USA, Japan and China as leaders, with France and United Kingdom as immediate followers, which all display, on the long run, a negative marginal value added on innovation. The present paper attempts to answer the following...

The point of departure is a competence-destroying technological discontinuity. We posit that the type of complementary assets (generic vs. specialized) needed to commercialize the new technology is critical in determining the industry- and firm-level performance in the post-discontinuity time...

This article investigates technological and organizational antecedents of product related service (PRS) strategies implemented by manufacturing firms. We examine the way manufacturing practices and the related technological and organizational innovations impact PRS offered by firms. Using an...

This work studies the processes of growth of the worlds top 150 pharmaceutical firms, on the grounds of an original database which also allows disaggregate analysis at the level of single therapeutic classes and chemical entities. Our findings show that the industry - whose long - term evolution...

In modern economies an increased utilisation of more and more advanced technologies as well as the more intensive use of physical and human capital can be observed. In this regard, the economic development of Taiwan is considered to be a complementary process of capital accumulation, innovation...

Over the past decade, the term bioeconomy has emerged in both policy and academic discourse. Implying a technology-driven approach to wealth generation from organic materials, the term has taken hold with so far limited critical engagement. It is a contestable rather than contested term. Noting...

This is the first chapter in Part 3. Its purpose is to contrast the value structure of platform systems with step processes from a technological perspective. I first review the basic technical architecture of computers and argue that every computer is inherently a platform for performing...

The IBM PC was the first digital computer platform that was open by as a matter of strategy, not necessity. The purpose of this chapter is to understand the IBM PC as a technical system and set of organization choices in light of the theory of how technology shapes organizations. In Chapter 7, I...

The purpose of this chapter is to use the theory of bottlenecks laid out in previous chapters to better understand the dynamics of an open standards-based platform. I describe how the Wintel platform evolved from 1990 through 2000 under joint sponsorship of Intel and Microsoft. I first describe...