This paper surveys recent research on the concept of a dominant product design. The point of departure for the survey is the idea that dominant designs occur which shift the terms of competition in an industry. A dominant design is defined as a specific path along a design hierarchy, which establishes primacy among competing design paths. The way in which this might occur and its implications for innovation and competition are then explored. Evidence from the literature covering a number of industries in the United States is then surveyed and compared with original evidence, first presented here, from some of the same industries in Japan. The dominant design which emerges in each industry is not necessarily the result solely of technical potentials, but also of timing, collateral assets, and other circumstances. In several cases dominant designs have not or have not yet occurred. Once a degree of standardization is accepted, major innovations in an industry seem less and less likely to occur short of a wave of new entrants and increasing competition. In contrast, entry and innovation in Japan seem to occur following appearance of the dominant design, and implies that firms can pursue widely different strategies so long as their strategy is linked to the state of evolution of their core technology. Implications for further research are discussed, and the idea that a dominant design is related to information economies for users is introduced. Thus, for a design to be dominant or a standard requires a degree of experimentation and a rich collaboration between producers and users, not simply a synthesis of parts and functions in a product.

NEW! Combined Text & Cases Version Considered by many to be the best textbook on Strategy, Contemporary Strategy Analysis 7th edition builds on the strengths of previous editions by introducing students to the core concepts and principles of strategy. In this most accessible strategy text, Robert M. Grant combines clarity of exposition with concentration on the fundamentals of value creation and an emphasis on practicality. In this seventh edition, a greater focus on strategy implementation reflects the needs of firms to reconcile scale economies with entrepreneurial flexibility, innovation with cost efficiency, and globalization with local responsiveness. Rob Grant eloquently combines theory with current real world examples and practice using a clearly written, logical and comprehensive style. Contemporary Strategy Analysis 7th edition is suitable for both MBA and advanced undergraduate students. Full teachings notes to the cases will be available upon publication at the companion website www.contemporarystrategyanalysis.com Contemporary Strategy Analysis 7th Edition is also available in a text only version – ISBN: 9780470747100

The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Strategic Management has been written by an international team of leading academics, practitioners and rising stars and contains almost 550 individually commissioned entries. It is the first resource of its kind to pull together such a comprehensive overview of the field and covers both the theoretical and more empirically/practitioner oriented side of the discipline.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the Second International Conference on Software Engineering Research and Applications, SERA 2004, held in May 2004. The 18 revised full papers presented together with four keynote addresses were carefully selected from 103 initial submissions during two rounds of reviewing and improvement. The papers are organized in topical sections. These include formal methods and tools, requirements engineering and reengineering, and information engineering.

A comprehensive and multidisciplinary view of the emerging paradigm of user and open innovation, offering both theoretical and empirical perspectives. The last two decades have witnessed an extraordinary growth of new models of managing and organizing the innovation process that emphasizes users over producers. Large parts of the knowledge economy now routinely rely on users, communities, and open innovation approaches to solve important technological and organizational problems. This view of innovation, pioneered by the economist Eric von Hippel, counters the dominant paradigm, which cast the profit-seeking incentives of firms as the main driver of technical change. In a series of influential writings, von Hippel and colleagues found empirical evidence that flatly contradicted the producer-centered model of innovation. Since then, the study of user-driven innovation has continued and expanded, with further empirical exploration of a distributed model of innovation that includes communities and platforms in a variety of contexts and with the development of theory to explain the economic underpinnings of this still emerging paradigm. This volume provides a comprehensive and multidisciplinary view of the field of user and open innovation, reflecting advances in the field over the last several decades. The contributors—including many colleagues of Eric von Hippel—offer both theoretical and empirical perspectives from such diverse fields as economics, the history of science and technology, law, management, and policy. The empirical contexts for their studies range from household goods to financial services. After discussing the fundamentals of user innovation, the contributors cover communities and innovation; legal aspects of user and community innovation; new roles for user innovators; user interactions with firms; and user innovation in practice, describing experiments, toolkits, and crowdsourcing, and crowdfunding. Contributors Efe Aksuyek, Yochai Benkler, James Bessen, Jörn H. Block, Annika Bock, Helena Canhão, Jeroen P. J. de Jong, Emmanuelle Fauchart, Dominique Foray, Nikolaus Franke, Johann Füller, Helena Garriga, Fred Gault, Fredrik Hacklin, Dietmar Harhoff, Joachim Henkel, Cornelius Herstatt, Christoph Hienerth, Venkat Kuppuswamy, Karim R. Lakhani, Christopher Lettl, Christian Lüthje, Ethan Mollick, Hidehiko Nishikawa, Alessandro Nuvolari, Susumu Ogawa, Pedro Oliveira, Stefan Perkmann Berger, Frank Piller, Christina Raasch, Susanne Roiser, Fabrizio Salvador, Pamela Samuelson, Tim Schweisfurth, Sonali K. Shah, Christoph Stockstrom, Katherine J. Strandburg, Stefan Thomke, Andrew W. Torrance, Mary Tripsas, Georg von Krogh

This three-volume set brings together the seminal contributions of the emerging new literature on alternative frameworks and methodologies for analyzing economic phenomena involving change. They focus on change as a central phenomenon, and innovative activity is at the heart of much of the work. Building on a rich intellectual heritage dating back to an earlier tradition represented by scholars such as Josef Schumpeter and Frank Knight, they seek to explain how and why firms are diverse, and how firms, industries, and regions change over time. Volume I (17 articles) discusses the product life cycle and industrial evolution, the start-up of new firms, sources and implications of diversity, the size distribution of firms, and growth. Volume II (18 articles) covers survival, learning and adaptation, productivity, and turbulence. Volume III (20 articles) addresses persistence, evolution and horizontal market structure, regional evolution, international competitiveness of industries, and public policies.The set lacks a subject index. Edited by Audretsch (Institute of Development Strategies, Indiana U.) and Klepper (economics and social science, Carnegie Mellon U.). Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This new book explores how firms achieve competitive advantage in a disruptive, digital and globalized business landscape. An integrative framework, ‘The Four Rs of Competitive Success’, is introduced, which covers the four core pillars of global strategy: resources and capabilities, technology and innovation (recombination), internationalization and international markets (reach), and physical and virtual location (roots). It then explains how competitive advantage is achieved through an interaction of these four drivers against the backdrop of a globalized and digitized world. It is uniquely practical in its approach, combining theoretical understanding with international case studies and real-life examples throughout each chapter, including Apple, IKEA and Microsoft. Unlocking Strategic Innovation is concise, applied reading for postgraduate students studying international business, corporate strategy, innovation and digital strategy, as well as academics in the field. It will also be important reading for practitioners looking to gain further understanding of how firms compete and flourish in a global and technology-driven environment.

Microeconomics is not applied math – frameworks in this book are regularly in use in daily managerial practice and strategic decision-making. Numerous case studies cover price discrimination, economies of scale, digital business models, game theory, dealing with uncertainty, entry barriers or sunk costs – all of which are crucial for understanding market dynamics and competitive behaviour.