Entrepreneurial opportunities and dominant designs in the U.S. broadcasting industry

Abstract

This paper modifies the product life cycle (PLC) model in order to address how modular design and vertical disintegration emerge and how they provide entrepreneurial opportunities. It uses historical analyses of the broadcasting industry to define these vertically disintegrated layers and the emergence of open design rules that enable vertically disintegrated firms to enter the sector. It uses data on the number of firms and revenues in each layer to show how the emergence of independent modules and vertical disintegration has led to the emergence of entrepreneurial opportunities even when other scholars define these modular designs as dominant designs, which is contrary to existing theories used in the entrepreneurial literature. ©2008 IEEE.