The aim of this special issue is to put forward the foundations of a ‘managerial’ discussion of the current crisis, in order to understand how not to repeat the same mistakes all over again. To be more concrete, for a very long time, organizational, managerial and economic analysis has taken sectors as given. This is not true anymore. As sectors dis-integrate and re-integrate, converge and transform, the question of how exactly economic activities are structured, and what determines the nature of firms’ and sectors’ boundaries evolution becomes more relevant than ever. Firms are increasingly trying to shape the nature of their environment and the ways in which labor is divided in the sector; they try to shape the “rules and roles” through which labor (and knowledge) is divided. To use a recently coined term, firms try to shape and re-define their “industry architectures”, i.e. the templates that determine “who does what” in a sector, as they appreciate that this will affect “who takes what”. For example, Google is trying to unseat Microsoft by using the same tactics that Microsoft used to unseat IBM – by changing the nature of the activities along the value chain and the way in which industry participants interact. Having done this in one sector, Google is now moving to mobile telephony trying to do the same. Apple is also actively trying to re-shape not only the nature of its products, but also the very layout of the sectors it operates in. Oracle, a software giant, has acquired Sun, a computer maker, pre-empting a similar move from IBM and Cisco and thus challenging the ‘traditional’ vertical division of labour within the PC industry so far organized around Dell’s business model of horizontal competition.
Strategic dynamics in industry architectures and the challenges of knowledge integration
BRUSONI, STEFANO;
2009
Abstract
The aim of this special issue is to put forward the foundations of a ‘managerial’ discussion of the current crisis, in order to understand how not to repeat the same mistakes all over again. To be more concrete, for a very long time, organizational, managerial and economic analysis has taken sectors as given. This is not true anymore. As sectors dis-integrate and re-integrate, converge and transform, the question of how exactly economic activities are structured, and what determines the nature of firms’ and sectors’ boundaries evolution becomes more relevant than ever. Firms are increasingly trying to shape the nature of their environment and the ways in which labor is divided in the sector; they try to shape the “rules and roles” through which labor (and knowledge) is divided. To use a recently coined term, firms try to shape and re-define their “industry architectures”, i.e. the templates that determine “who does what” in a sector, as they appreciate that this will affect “who takes what”. For example, Google is trying to unseat Microsoft by using the same tactics that Microsoft used to unseat IBM – by changing the nature of the activities along the value chain and the way in which industry participants interact. Having done this in one sector, Google is now moving to mobile telephony trying to do the same. Apple is also actively trying to re-shape not only the nature of its products, but also the very layout of the sectors it operates in. Oracle, a software giant, has acquired Sun, a computer maker, pre-empting a similar move from IBM and Cisco and thus challenging the ‘traditional’ vertical division of labour within the PC industry so far organized around Dell’s business model of horizontal competition.
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