Exploring the relationship between technical and service characteristics

The paper explores the complex relationship between technical and service characteristics discussed by the Saviotti–Metcalfe model of innovation. It is proposed that principal components analysis (PCA) is a more appropriate method of analysing this relationship than approaches previously used. A PCA is performed on a dataset of mobile phone handsets for the period 2003 to 2008. In addition to the relationship between technical and service characteristics, the analysis explores the existence of clusters of ergonomic characteristics within mobile phone handsets. The findings indicate that a limited set of core technology components underpin the large set of service characteristics offered by mobile phone handsets, and that the mapping between technical and service characteristics can be highly complex.

[1]  R. Langlois.  The Vanishing Hand: The Changing Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism , 2001 .

[2]  B. Scrosati,et al.  Advances in lithium-ion batteries , 2002 .

[3]  Mark Tomlinson,et al.  Patterns in UK company innovation styles: New evidence from the CBI innovation trends survey , 1998 .

[4]  K. Lancaster.  A New Approach to Consumer Theory , 1966, Journal of Political Economy.

[5]  Paul Windrum,et al.  Structural change in the presence of network externalities: a co-evolutionary model of technological successions , 2004 .

[6]  Paul Windrum,et al.  A neo-Schumpeterian model of health services innovation , 2008 .

[7]  G. Dosi.  Technological Paradigms and Technological Trajectories: A Suggested Interpretation of the Determinants and Directions of Technical Change , 1982 .

[8]  Faïz Gallouj,et al.  Innovation in services , 1997 .

[9]  Hariolf Grupp,et al.  Foundations of the economics of innovation : theory, measurement and practice , 1998 .

[10]  P. Windrum.  Heterogeneous preferences and new innovation cycles in mature industries: the amateur camera industry 1955-1974 , 2005 .

[11]  Loet Leydesdorff,et al.  Scaling trajectories in civil aircraft (1913–1997) , 2000, 1001.1312.

[12]  T. Kuhn,et al.  The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. , 1964 .

[13]  Carliss Y. Baldwin,et al.  Managing in an age of modularity. , 1997, Harvard business review.

[14]  John Metcalfe,et al.  A theoretical approach to the construction of technological output indicators , 1984 .

[15]  Michael S. Lewis-Beck,et al.  Factor analysis and related techniques , 1994 .

[16]  Koen Frenken,et al.  Variety and niche creation in aircraft, helicopters, motorcycles and microcomputers , 1999 .

[17]  Manuel Trajtenberg,et al.  The Welfare Analysis of Product Innovations, with an Application to Computed Tomography Scanners , 1989, Journal of Political Economy.

[18]  B. Ahamad.  A Note on the Interrelationships of Crimes—A Reply to Mrs Walker , 1968 .

[19]  D. Linden.  Handbook Of Batteries , 2001 .

[20]  Ian G. Stewart,et al.  Quantity and Price Indexes in National Accounts. , 1958 .

[21]  J. Stevens.  Applied Multivariate Statistics for the Social Sciences , 1986 .

[22]  K. Lancaster,et al.  Consumer Demand. A New Approach. , 1972 .

[23]  P. Saviotti.  Technological Evolution, Variety and the Economy , 1996 .

[24]  I. Jolliffe.  Principal Component Analysis , 2002 .

[25]  Alfonso Gambardella.  Foundation of the Economics of Innovation: Theory, Measurement and Practice: Hariolf Grupp (Ed.), Edward Elgar, Cheltenham UK, 1998, 521 pp., [UK pound]65.00, ISBN 1-85898-7164 , 2001 .

[26]  Z. Griliches.  HYBRID CORN: AN EXPLORATION IN THE ECONOMIC OF TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE , 1957 .

[27]  B. Ahamad,et al.  An Analysis of Crimes by the Method of Principal Components , 1967 .

[28]  Pier Paolo Saviotti,et al.  An approach to the measurement of technology based on the hedonic price method and related methods , 1985 .

[29]  Paul Windrum,et al.  Consumer heterogeneity and the development of environmentallyfriendly technologies , 2009 .

[30]  B. Tether,et al.  The organisational-cooperation mode of innovation and its prominence amongst European service firms , 2008 .

[31]  Paul Windrum,et al.  Environmental impact, quality, and price: consumer trade-offs and the development of environmentally friendly technologies , 2009 .

[32]  G. Dosi.  Technological Paradigms and Technological Trajectories , 1993 .

[33]  A. Trickett,et al.  The Evolution of Helicopter Technology, 1940–1986 , 1992 .

[34]  C. Birchenhall,et al.  Is product life cycle theory a special case? Dominant designs and the emergence of market niches through coevolutionary-learning , 1998 .

[35]  Kim B. Clark,et al.  Architectural Innovation: The Reconfiguration of Existing Product Technologies and the Failure of , 1990 .

[36]  K. Pavitt,et al.  Knowledge Specialization, Organizational Coupling, and the Boundaries of the Firm: Why Do Firms Know More than They Make? , 2001 .