Standardized general purpose technologies: A note

Coopetition, Standardization and General Purpose Technologies: A Framework and an Application

“…GPTs are specific types of technologies that fulfil certain criteria: They are pervasive, improve continuously, and spawn innovation (Bresnahan, 2010;Bresnahan & Trajtenberg, 1995;Heikkilä & Wikström, 2021;Jovanovic & Rousseau, 2005). Here we focus particularly on identification of GPTs based on these criteria (see Section 3).…”

“…General purpose technologies (GPTs), such as steam, electricity, and information and communication technologies (IT and ICT), have been important drivers of technological progress (Bresnahan & Trajtenberg, 1995;Lipsey et al, 2005;Bresnahan, 2010;Bekar et al, 2018, Heikkilä & Wikström, 2021. In prior literature, IT and ICT have been considered GPTs (Basu & Fernald, 2007;Jovanovic & Rousseau, 2005;Kim et al, 2021;Liao et al, 2016;Vu et al, 2020), and currently, during the 4th Industrial Revolution, artificial intelligence (AI) has been considered the next big GPT (Brynjolfsson et al, 2021;Trajtenberg 2018;Vannuccini & Prytkova 2021).…”

“…Yet, the role of standards as a focal mechanism in technology diffusion and as an enabler of network effects and complementary innovations seems to need more attention. Heikkilä and Wikström (2021) documented that the most common examples of GPTs (steam, railway, electricity, IT and ICT) have been subject to standardization efforts over time, suggesting that standards development has impacted the technological progress in these fields. Here, we focus on cellular technology, which is among the most important and widely used standardized global technologies: in 2022Q4, there are estimated to be more than 11 billion mobile cellular subscriptions.…”

“…This article contributes to the emerging literature connecting the analysis of GPTs and standards development (Baron & Schmidt, 2014;Heikkilä & Wikström, 2021;Lindmark, 2005;Martinelli et al, 2021;Parcu et al, 2022a;Simcoe, 2015;Teece, 2018;Thoma, 2008) by linking them to the burgeoning coopetition literature (e.g., Basole et al, 2015;Bengtsson & Kock, 2000;Devece et al, 2019;Gernsheimer et al, 2021). Standards development is a prime setting to analyze concurrent collaboration and competition (Leiponen, 2008;Oshri & Weeber, 2006)-that is, coopetition between companies.…”

“…Dyadic links have already been made between these strands of research literature, but the aim here is to synthesize their intersection. Whereas the standardization perspective may add more structure and boundaries to the empirical analysis of GPTs and provide a more complete picture of the evolution of GPTs (Heikkilä & Wikström, 2021), a coopetition perspective makes visible the collaboration and competition between companies developing and implementing GPTs. Certain established "canonical" criteria, or necessary conditions, for GPTs exist (Bresnahan & Trajtenberg, 1995;Brynjolfsson et al, 2021;Goldfarb et al, 2023;Jovanovic & Rousseau, 2005), but there are no clear-cut thresholds-that is, explicit sufficient conditions when a potential GPT reaches the level of a "true" GPT.…”