Publications
Publications
- March – April 2008
- Managerial and Decision Economics
Customer Preference Discontinuities: A Trigger for Radical Technological Change
By: Mary Tripsas
Abstract
What factors cause a mature industry to re-enter a period of technological turbulence? This paper addresses this question by developing a model of technological evolution that incorporates both technological trajectories and a new concept: preference trajectories, which are cycles of incremental and discontinuous change in preferences. Preference discontinuities turn out to play an important role in triggering technological transitions in an industry. I illustrate the model with an historical study of the typesetter industry, which underwent three major technological transitions, each of which was driven by preference discontinuities.
Keywords
Citation
Tripsas, Mary. "Customer Preference Discontinuities: A Trigger for Radical Technological Change." Managerial and Decision Economics 29 (March–April 2008): 79–97.