Research On The Growth Mechanism Of Product Architecture Without Dominant Design

Product architecture is the specific embodiment of enterprise product decisions,which is related to whether the enterprise can obtain profits and high-quality performance.In the 1990 s,product architecture design was introduced into the field of enterprise management as a solution to complex product development,and gradually became an important tool for enterprises to coordinate internal and external resources and deal with complex product systems and organizational relationships.At the same time,the growth of product architecture has certain internal laws.When designing product architecture,enterprises need to follow the laws of architecture growth on the one hand,and on the other hand,they need to consider the internal and external environment of the enterprise,which brings great challenges to the design of product architecture in a dynamic environment.The speed of technological change is accelerating,and the uncertainty and risk of product R&D and innovation are increasing.Grasping the inherent law of product architecture growth and clarifying the mechanism of product architecture growth are of strategic significance for enterprises to design product architecture and conduct efficient product R&D and innovation.Summarizing relevant literature on the growth of product architecture,the existing literature focuses on the advantages of modular architecture,and most of the literature explores the static matching between product architecture and organizational context.It can be seen that most of the research on product architecture remains in the initial stage of "what",and the further research on "why" and "how" is relatively lacking.The path and implementation mechanism of architecture growth in the dynamic process of product architecture growth are not clear.Based on this,this paper adopts the exploratory case study method and follows the analytical logic of "context(growth drivers)--process and content(path selection,implementation mechanism)".This paper analyzes the growth process of product architecture from "0 to 1",and explores the growth path and implementation mechanism of product architecture without dominant design.The research is divided into three sub-studies.Sub-study 1 adopts the multi-case study method and combines the grounded theory to conduct multi-case studies on four products from different industries,analyze the similarities and differences in the growth ways of product architecture of the four case objects,and finally summarize the growth ways of product architecture under the context of none-dominant design.Sub-study 2adopts the method of double cases comparative study.Based on the conclusion of sub-study 1,the product architecture growth paths of the two case objects are compared and analyzed to explore the product architecture growth paths under the context of none-dominant design.Based on the findings of the first two sub-studies,sub-study 3conducts a single-case longitudinal study to explore the implementation mechanism of product architecture growth in the context of none-dominant design from the perspective of organizational learning.The research mainly draws the following conclusions:The first,in the context of non dominant design,the "transformational","reinforcement",and "expansion" drivers respectively drive the growth of product architecture led by systems,modules,and interfaces.Firstly,the changes in the three elements of architecture(system,module,and interface)have formed system led growth,module led growth,and interface led growth,respectively.Secondly,the drivers of product architecture growth can be divided into "transformational" drivers,"strengthening" drivers,and "expanding" drivers.The "transformational" motivation includes external factors such as changes in technology and market demand,and internal factors such as strategic transformation.The "strengthened" motivation includes external factors such as customer demand,market competition,and internal factors such as task performance.The "expansion oriented" motivation includes external factors such as enterprise cooperation and internal factors such as business expansion.When there is no dominant design,during the system formation period,the "transformational" driver drives the growth of system led architecture.During the period of functional improvement,the ’strengthened’ driving force drives the module led growth of product architecture.During the product extension period,the "expansion oriented" driver drives the interface led growth of architecture.Finally,changes in the growth drivers of architecture will drive the growth of product architecture to cycle back and forth in different ways.Second,in the context of none-dominant design,the growth paths of different stages of product architecture growth are different.Under the different internal and external motivations stimulating,the growth path of product architecture presents the evolution of "expert experiential decision-making triggering systematic-led radical innovation,to customer-oriented decision-making triggering modular innovation,to competition-oriented decision-making triggering component-led incremental innovation,and to strategic cooperation-oriented decision-making triggering architectural innovation".Triggered by different goals and environmental factors,the growth of product architecture from "0 to 1" comes from a series of architecture innovations.Third,binary learning and unlearning provide power to balance contradictions and ability transformation in product architecture growth and architecture innovation activities.Different internal motivations trigger different collaboration mechanisms between the two to promote product architecture innovation,thus realizing the growth of product architecture during the formative period of the system,open-ended unlearning and exploratory learning collaborate to update system knowledge,thinking mode and development mode to promote system-led radical innovation.In the period of function perfection,the modular innovation of products is promoted by the collaborative reinforcement development mode of exploitative learning and goal-directed unlearning,and the collaborative updating of modular knowledge by open-ended unlearning and exploratory learning.In the system debugging period,exploitative learning and goal-directed unlearning are used to strengthen the component knowledge and organizational practice,and promote the incremental innovation led by the component.During the product extension period,open-ended unlearning and exploratory learning collaborate to update the architectural knowledge,and exploitative learning and goal-directed unlearning collaborate to strengthen the knowledge of new products,so as to jointly promote the architectural innovation.There are several innovations in this paper.First of all,this study analyzes the modes and causes of the growth of product architecture from a dynamic perspective,make clear the relationship between different internal and external motivations and the different growth modes.Secondly,the article verifies the path through which enterprises can realize the growth of product architecture under different motivations in the context of non-dominant design,and it provides theoretical basis for enterprises to choose decision mechanism in architecture design and allocate resources reasonably.Thirdly,the article concludes that exploratory learning,exploitative learning and unlearning are the driving force to balance the contradictions and ability transformation in the growth of product architecture,and clarifies the collaborative mechanism of organizational binary learning and unlearning under different motivations.Fourthly,the article verifies the role of the three elements of product architecture in the growth of product architecture,thus the architecture theory is developed.Fifth,this study finds that the growth of product architecture comes from continuous product architecture innovations,which deepens and develops the theory of architecture innovation.Future research will examine the results through mathematical studies and examine the influence mechanism of suppliers and partners on the growth of product architecture.