Systems, Components and Technological Discontinuities: The Case of the Semiconductor Industry

Jeffrey Funk

Industry and Innovation, 2008, vol. 15, issue 4, 411-433

Abstract: This paper uses the semiconductor industry to describe a model of technological change that sheds light on the mechanism by which many technological discontinuities occur. The model combines two arguments: (1) incremental improvements in a system's components impact on the performance and design of systems; and (2) these incremental improvements in components can lead to discontinuities in system design through their impact on the design tradeoffs that are inherent in all systems. Components are defined loosely as any subsystem in a nested hierarchy of subsystems where the most important component in the semiconductor industry is semiconductor manufacturing equipment. Improvements in this equipment and the processes they are used in have changed (and continue to change) the tradeoffs that firms make in their choices of semiconductor materials, transistor designs and system designs, and thus led to a number of technological discontinuities. The model is described using the discontinuities that are the most widely emphasized in histories of the semiconductor industry.

Keywords: Technological discontinuities; dominant designs; components; hierarchies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13662710802239489 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:indinn:v:15:y:2008:i:4:p:411-433

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CIAI20

DOI: 10.1080/13662710802239489

Access Statistics for this article

Industry and Innovation is currently edited by Associate Professor Mark Lorenzen

More articles in Industry and Innovation from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().