Abstract
The authors thank Eric Abrahamson, Warren Boeker, Donald Hambrick, and three anonymous reviewers for their assistance. An evolutionary model of technological change is proposed in which a technological breakthrough, or discontinuity, initiates an era of intense technical variation and selection, culminating in a single dominant design. This era of ferment is followed by a period of incremental technical progress, which may be broken by a subsequent technological discontinuity. A longitudinal study of the cement (1888-1980), glass (1893-1980), and minicomputer (1958-1982) industries indicates that when patents are not a significant factor, a technological discontinuity is generally followed by a single standard. Across these diverse product classes, sales always peak after a dominant design emerges. Discontinuities never become dominant designs, and dominant designs lag behind the industry's technical frontier. Both the length of the era of ferment and the type of firm inaugurating a standard are contingent on how the discontinuity affects existing competences. Eras of ferment account for the majority of observed technical progress across these three industries.'
Keywords
Discontinuity (linguistics)Classification of discontinuitiesTechnological changeTechnical changeFrontierEconomicsIndustrial organizationEconomic geographyMathematicsMacroeconomicsProductivityPolitical scienceLaw
Related Publications
Inside the Black Box: Technology and Economics
Explores how technological innovation has shaped and been shaped by science, industry, and economics in the twentieth century. Technological change and specific technologies hav...
Key Characteristics of the Large Innovating Firm*
SUMMARY Large innovating firms are a major source of the world's technology, and in the 20th century have shown great resilience in absorbing successive waves of radical innovat...
The influence of market demand upon innovation: a critical review of some recent empirical studies
Until quite recently, economists devoted little attention to the factors that influence the rate and direction of innovation. Much of the formal economic theory on technical cha...
Regime shifts to sustainability through processes of niche formation: The approach of strategic niche management
The unsustainability of the present trajctories of technical change in sectors such as transport and agriculture is widely recognized. It is far from clear, however, how a trans...
Strategy as a field of study: Why search for a new paradigm?
The fundamental structural transitions in a wide variety of industries brought about by major catalysts such as deregulation, global competition, technological discontinuities, ...
Publication Info
- Year
- 1990
- Type
- article
- Volume
- 35
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 604-604
- Citations
- 3185
- Access
- Closed
External Links
Social Impact
Altmetric
PlumX Metrics
Social media, news, blog, policy document mentions
Citation Metrics
3185
OpenAlex
Cite This
Philip C. Anderson,
Michael L. Tushman
(1990).
Technological Discontinuities and Dominant Designs: A Cyclical Model of Technological Change.
Administrative Science Quarterly
, 35
(4)
, 604-604.
https://doi.org/10.2307/2393511
Identifiers
- DOI
- 10.2307/2393511