BHATIA, KEITH; DBA
NOVA SOUTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY
BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION, MANAGEMENT (0454); ECONOMICS, COMMERCE-BUSINESS
(0505); MASS COMMUNICATIONS (0708)
Technological substitution affects the demand and supply curve for every firm
or industry. The ability to
forecast technological substitution enables strategic planners to develop trends
and focus product
development for their specific technological application. The goal of this study
was to understand the
relationship between technological substitution and new product growth. This
relationship is a significant
input into an organization's strategic development. The specific relationship
under analysis is between
technological substitution and diffusion of innovation, and was the basis of
the hypotheses. The
research question is defined around the prediction of technological substitution
and the ability to
forecast potential adopters. This study focuses within a single high technology
market that has both
stable and new technologies. In an environment of many new technological introductions,
there is an
expectation that there will be a displacement of a technology. This means that
over a certain period of
time in which there are many technological introductions, the coexistence with
an older technology
would be rare. The Norton and Bass (1987) model is the only attempt at linking
the substitution and
diffusion of innovation areas. However, Norton and Bass (1987) only looked at
simple device
substitution. This study uses the models developed from Fisher and Pry (1971)
and Bass (1969), which
was the basis for the Norton and Bass (1987) model and expands the concept to
technology
applications. The high technology market observed in this study is the land
mobile radio communications
market. The land mobile radio communications market has different technological
approaches with a rapid
increase in technological developments which makes it a prime market for technological
substitution. The
model used can identify the technological paths that define the technological
substitution point. In
previous work a large amount of data was necessary. In this case, a limited
amount of data was used and
good results were obtained. The study has shown that within the mobile communications
technology
applications, that previous adopters of one technology will be substituted by
the potential adopters of a
different technology in a predicted time frame.
Social
Systems Simulation Group
P.O. Box 6904 San Diego, CA 92166-0904 Roland Werner, Principal Phone/FAX (619) 660-1603 |