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  • 2019
  • Working Paper
  • HBS Working Paper Series

Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 17 The Wintel Standards-based Platform

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin
  • Format:Print
  • | Language:English
  • | Pages:30
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Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to use the theory of bottlenecks laid out in previous chapters to better understand the dynamics of an open standards-based platform. I describe how the Wintel platform evolved from 1990 through 2000 under joint sponsorship of Intel and Microsoft. I first describe a series of technical bottlenecks that arose in the early 1990s concerning the “bus architecture” of IBM-compatible PCs. Intel’s management of buses demonstrates how, under conditions of distributed supermodular complementarity, a platform sponsor can reconfigure the modular structure of a technical system, property rights within the system, and its own zone of authority to increase system-wide throughput, while protecting its own strategic bottleneck from disintermediation. I go on to describe how Microsoft used platform envelopment to establish a second strategic bottleneck in productivity software and later to respond to the threat of disintermediation from platform-independent internet browsers. I end the chapter by discussing the conditions under which shared platform sponsorship can be a long-term dynamic equilibrium.

Keywords

Open Platforms; Bottlenecks; Wintel Platform; Disintermediation; Information Infrastructure; Applications and Software; Business History; Digital Platforms; Computer Industry

Citation

Baldwin, Carliss Y. "Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 17 The Wintel Standards-based Platform." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 20-055, November 2019.
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About The Author

Carliss Y. Baldwin

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More from the Author

    • 2021
    • Faculty Research

    Computer-Implemented Methods and Systems for Measuring, Estimating, and Managing Economic Outcomes and Technical Debt in Software Systems and Projects: US Patent 11,126,427 B2

    By: Daniel J. Sturtevant, Carliss Baldwin, Alan MacCormack, Sunny Ahn and Sean Gilliland
    • 2020
    • Faculty Research

    Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 7 The Value Structure of Technologies, Part 2: Strategy without Numbers

    By: Carliss Y. Baldwin
    • 2020
    • Faculty Research

    Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 6 The Value Structure of Technologies, Part 1: Mapping Functional Relationships

    By: Carliss Y. Baldwin
More from the Author
  • Computer-Implemented Methods and Systems for Measuring, Estimating, and Managing Economic Outcomes and Technical Debt in Software Systems and Projects: US Patent 11,126,427 B2 By: Daniel J. Sturtevant, Carliss Baldwin, Alan MacCormack, Sunny Ahn and Sean Gilliland
  • Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 7 The Value Structure of Technologies, Part 2: Strategy without Numbers By: Carliss Y. Baldwin
  • Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 6 The Value Structure of Technologies, Part 1: Mapping Functional Relationships By: Carliss Y. Baldwin
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