Research On The Formation Mechanism Of The Dominant Design Of Complex Technical Systems

Why did Blu-ray disc win over HD DVD?How can TD-SCDMA be the 3G mobile communication technology standard?The Polar code developed by Huawei Technology was defined as the control channel encoding scheme for the application of 5G in the eMBB(enhanced mobile broadband)scenario,which technology will be selected as the 5G mobile communication standard in the future?Technology standard battles and the emergence of dominant designs are one of the core research themes in the field of technology innovation management.The role of technology standard is becoming increasingly important due to the fact that various technical components are needed to be interconnected within the complex technology systems.In addition,various stakeholders are involved in standard battles between complex technology systems.Therefore,the outcome of standard battles will not only influence the future technology development trend in specific industy,but also will influence the benefits for participants,especially technology sponsors,even threaten their survival chances.By revealing the driving factors of technology standard battles and formation mechanisms of dominant designs for complex technology systems,the research may provide significant implications for strategic choice and technology design decisions by technology sponsors.Based on the technology management theory,social network theory and strategic management theory,the thesis examines the standard battles for the complex technology systems,such as semiconductor technology,Blu-ray storage technology and local area network technology,and responds to the research questions such as how to identify technological opportunities,why standard alliances established by some technology sponsors may attract more supporters than other technology sponsors,and why technology standard with initial inferiority design may become the dominant design.The thesis focuses on the above three research questions with the aim of revealing the formation mechanism of dominant designs for complex technology systems.Based on the technology regime theory and technology life cycle theory,Part 1 provides an Markov Regime-Switching model for forecasting technology opportunity with time-series patent data from January 1977 to June 2014 in semiconductor industry.The empirical results indicate that the transition between expansion state and contraction state of authorized patent quantity is relatively quick,and that the duration of an expansion state which authorized patent quantity is increasing is significantly shorter than that of a contraction state in semiconductor industry.The average duration of an expansion state is about 4.167 months,while the average duration of a contraction state is about 13.699 months.Compared with previous studies,the Markov Regime-Switching(MRS)method in this paper provides a more accurate forecast on windows of technology opportunity in a specific field.Based on the social network theory,Part 2 takes the longitudinal case study and investigates the period before technology standard development and the impact of technology sponsors' network patterns on standard alliance and the emergence of a dominant design.The case study on the standard battle between BD and HD DVD in the compact disc industry shows that technology sponsors with higher degree centrality may attract more potential technology supporters,thereby increases the size and diversity of standard alliance.The case study also shows that the impact of technology sponsors'network tie relationship on the size of standard alliance depends both on the network tie strength and on the different stages of standard alliance.In the early stage of standard alliance evolution,technology sponsors may attract actors with whom they have built up strong ties to join the standard alliance;In the later stage of standard alliance evolution,even there exist strong ties between technology sponsors and technology supporters,the relationship may be exposed to opportunism in "winner-takes-all" standard battles as the standard battle continues over time.Based on the firm-level and technology-level perspectives,Part 3 takes the comparative case study method and investigates the relationships among appropriability strategy of technology sponsors,technology flexibility and the size of standard alliances.The case studies on BD vs.HD DVD and Ethernet vs.Token Ring show that the lower level of appropriability strategy undertaken by technology sponsors may not only increase the flexibility of technology standard,but also contribute to enlarging the size of standard alliances.In the extreme cases,technology sponsors cannot resolve the paradox of "improving appropriability" and "increasing technology adoption".Even if technology sponsors may adopt a lower level of appropriability strategy in order to attract potential technology supporters,they must keep some control on the technology to avoid the "fragmentation"of technology standard.The case studies also show that the higher level of technological flexiblity always means more revisions and improvements,which may compensate for the initial design shortcomings with specific technology standard.It may also be used to explain why technology standard with initial design inferiority become the dominant design.There are four possible theoretical contributions towards understanding the standard battles.First,based on the technology regime theory and technology life cycle theory,the thesis provides a quantitative method of identifying technological opportunities for technology sponsors with Markov Regime-Switching(MRS)method by characterizing the dynamic path of specific industry using time-series patent data,which can be used for forecasting windows of technology opportunity and provide decisionmaking basis for technology sponsor' entry into the markets.Second,based on social network theory,the thesis explores the influence of network embeddedness of technology sponsors on technology standard battles.The thesis expands the research interval for technology standard battles and application of social network theory,which enriches the theoretical framework for technology standard battles.Third,the thesis investigates the effects of appropriability strategy by technology sponsors and technology flexibility on the technology adoption decision by potential technology supporters with firm-level and technology-level perspectives,which complements and enriches the relevant research in standard battles.Fourth,the author argues that even specific technology is technically inferior to other technologies,the higher flexiblity of technology standard always means more revisions and improvements on the technology standard,which may compensate for the initial inferiority design.It may also be used to explain why technology standard with initial inferiority design may become the dominant design.