Battles for technological dominance: an integrative framework

This paper proposes an integrative framework for understanding the process by which a technology achieves dominance when battling against other technological designs. We focus on describing the different stages of a dominance battle and propose five battle milestones that in turn define five key phases in the process. We review the literature from several disciplines to identify the key firm- and environment-level factors that affect the outcome of a technology battle and posit that the relative importance of each factor will vary depending on the phase considered. Our framework complements and extends existing literature and has implications both for theory and for management practice. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.