The evolution of the innovation network and the technological system in a standard developing organization. The example of cellular telecommunications

Standard developing organizations (SDOs) are voluntary inter-organizational collaborations with the goal to develop jointly compatibility standards for complex modular technological systems. This dissertation examines the evolution of the innovation network and technological system in a SDO with the perspective of complementing micro and macro level. The dissertation is rooted in the multidisciplinary complex system theory and draws on a broad range of literature from management, sociology, biology and physics with the common theme of bipartite network analysis. The innovation network is conceptualized as a bipartite network with ties between organizations and innovations to which they contribute. I show that technical capital, resources in the SDO and their match between organization and innovation, rather than social capital, network position, drive the tie formation in the innovation network. To answer the question of emerging order in an innovation ecology without formal hierarchy I borrow from the literature of ecological mutualistic networks. I show that a nested order emerges based on a parsimonious process of matching resources, that leads to a rather stable system over more than ten years. The evolution of the technological system in the SDO environment departs from the established life cycle model and is best described by a life spiral model with continuously increasing system performance rather than punctuated equilibria. The key distinction to market-based technological evolution is the coordinated and designed development process within the SDO, that allows to introduce new services and change core parts of the system based on architectural knowledge. As a consequence the development process follows a gradual change model with changing tempo. Furthermore the evolution is characterized by simultaneity of innovation types that identifies the SDO as ambidextrous organization with separation of exploitation and exploration on project level. The research context is Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) in the cellular telecommunications industry with data from 1992 to 2011.Ph. D.Includes bibliographical referencesIncludes vitaby Anke Piepenbrin