Technology Reemergence: Creating New Value for Old Technologies in Swiss Mechanical Watchmaking, 1970–2008

Abstract

This article uses a study of the Swiss mechanical watch industry to build theory about how a legacy technology, instead of being supplanted by a new dominant design as current theory would predict, is able to reemerge and achieve new market growth. The introduction of the battery-powered quartz watch in the 1970s made mechanical watches largely obsolete, but by 2008 the Swiss mechanical watchmaking industry had rematerialized to become the world’s leading exporter (in monetary value) of watches. This study uncovers the process and mechanisms associated with technology reemergence: the resurgence of substantive and sustained demand for a legacy technology following the introduction of a new dominant design. It reveals that technology reemergence involves a cognitive process of redefining both the meanings and values associated with the legacy technology and the boundaries of the market for that technology. Watchmakers redefined and combined values of craftsmanship, luxury, and precision to create new meanings and values for mechanical watch technology; repositioned the mechanical watch as an identity and status marker; temporally distanced themselves from the period of the discontinuous quartz technology by recalling their founding and more successful past and connecting it to the future; and used conceptual bridges such as analogies and metaphors to help employees and consumers understand the new meanings. They redefined market boundaries by reclaiming the competitive set, rebuilding the community of mechanical watchmakers, and mobilizing groups of enthusiast consumers who valued the mechanical watch. For mechanical watchmakers, reemergence culminated in competitive and consumer differentiation that ushered in reinvestment in innovation and substantive and sustained demand growth for the legacy technology.

From farms to fuel tanks: Stakeholder framing contests and entrepreneurship in the emergent U.S. biodiesel market

“…Market evolution thereby can result from the types of firms that enter the market and reflect the meanings associated with the frames that are salient at the firms' foundings. Accordingly, these findings contribute to recent studies indicating the need for deeper understanding of how struggles over central category meanings shape entrepreneurial action, technology and industry reemergence, and market evolution (Grodal & Kahl, ; Raffaelli, ; Vergne & Swain, ).…”

“…By exploring competing frames from three stakeholder groups, we answer scholarly calls to take a “more agency‐motivated approach” to category research (Durand & Khaire, , p. 89) and begin to identify the underlying mechanisms whereby multiple stakeholders can influence new market emergence and evolution. In related terms, the findings extend research on strategic framing (Harmon, ; McDonald & Gao, ; Raffaelli, ). Although prior studies have emphasized the dynamics between movement frames and changing political opportunity structures (Benford & Snow, ), we theorize and examine how stakeholder frames can alter entrepreneurial opportunity structures and, hence, the choices surrounding market entry and technology adoption, and we call for future studies on this phenomenon.…”

Disruptive Innovation: An Intellectual History and Directions for Future Research

“…They may do this by partnering with or licensing startups’ technology once it reaches a certain threshold (Marx et al, ), by acquiring entrants outright (Christensen et al, ; Kapoor and Klueter, ; McDonald and Eisenhardt, ; Sandström et al, ), or (in the case of systemic network‐based industries) by introducing a new platform (Altman and Tushman, ; Eisenmann et al, ; Garud and Kumaraswamy, ). Finally, incumbents that have been disrupted can pursue a technology reemergence strategy by redefining the meanings and values associated with their legacy technology, as well as by redefining the boundaries of the market they compete in (Raffaelli, ). By effectively creating a new dimension of performance, this strategy can enable incumbents to re‐attract customers who once defected to the disruptive innovation…”

Perspectives on Disruptive Innovations

“…For incumbents, the advent of innovations can disrupt existing relationships. For instance, the introduction of the quartz movement disrupted the watchmaking production networks in Switzerland (Glasmeier, ; Raffaelli, ). Similarly, the ‘Open Access’ model in publishing that allows free access and unrestricted use of academic literature disrupts the relationship between publishers, authors, universities and readers under the ‘Toll Access’ model, wherein readers or universities that subscribe to these publications need to pay to access them (Thananusak and Ansari, (forthcoming).…”