1. Exploring the Limits of the Technology S-Curves – Component Technologies
Clayton Christensen

2. Technology S-Curve Maturity Growth Time or Engineering Effort
Product
Performance
Emergence
Time or Engineering Effort

3. Technology S-Curve
It has become a way of thinking about technological improvement over a period of time
Theory
Early stages improvement in performance is slow
As the technology is understood and diffused, rate of improvement increases

4. Technology S _Curves S-Curve - used at the industry level
Incumbent firms are concerned about refining existing technologies
They lose their positions of dominance to new entrants

5. Typologies of technological change
Architectural change
Rearrangement in the way components are relate to each other
Using the motors and fan blades coming up with a table fan
Modular change
Fundamental change in the technological approach employed in a component where the architecture is left unchanged
Changing the type of motor in a ceiling fan

6. Typologies of technological Change (Contd)
Incremental change
Improvements in component performance
Better quality RAMs, memory chips
Radical innovation
Change in architecture and new approach in the component level

7. Using the technology S-Curve at the firm level
Why is harder to get performance improvement as a technology reaches maturity?
Scale phenomenon (things get too large or too small)
System complexity

8. The Disk Drive industry
What is the performance measure for incumbents?
Areal recording density
When resources spent in engineering improve the performance of a technology, there is less of an incentive to switch to alternate technologies.

9. Component and Architectural technologies
Disk Drive System
Component Technology
Read write technology on the disk drive
Ferrite and Oxide Technologies Vs. Thin Film Heads
Incumbents prefer to work on existing technologies and make incremental changes that bring performance improvements
Resource Rich companies invest in radical component improvements
Thin film heads cost IBM over $1 billion and took over 10 years
Architectural technology
Cost significantly less and can be developed in lesser time

10. Timing of adoption Thin film technology replaced the Ferrite heads
The time at which different firms switched to the new component technology varied over a 10 year period
The extent of performance improvement was also different
IBM was one of the early movers (1978)
Hitachi and Fujitsu switched much later in the mid 1980s
Switching to a new technology did not improve the performance

11. Timing of adoption (Contd)
No relationship between timing of adoption and performance improvement
Early adopters no clear improvement in storage capacity
Later adopters able to work with the technology and improve performance
Companies had different strategies in the way they adopted component technologies
Some companies like IBM choose to switch to new technologies
HP preferred to improve existing technologies

12. Incumbents vs. New Entrants and S-Curves
Incumbents are more likely to succeed wrt changes to component technologies
New Entrants seldom succeed with Component technologies
The story is different with architectural technologies
Component technologies reinforce existing competencies
Architectural technologies look at competencies with a different lens.