The note on which an entry for the Palgrave Encyclopedia of Strategic Management will draw offers a beginner's guide to path dependency in technologies and organizations. We address the very meaning of the concept and its centrality in various aspects of economic analysis. We outline the various...

This study focuses on a well-known but yet elusive concept: (technological) lock-in. We summarize what is known about the nature of lock-in and offer a critical view on history- dependent processes based on recent contributions to the literature. We discuss if lock-ins are really inescapable,...

The development of path-dependent processes basically refers to positive feedback in terms of increasing returns as the main driving forces of such processes. Furthermore, path dependence can be affected by context factors, such as different degrees of complexity. Up to now, it has been unclear...