Six steps to make your technology the new de facto standard

In high-technology industries such as consumer electronics, information technology, telecommunications, and biotech, ‘winner-takes-all’ technology competitions are increasingly seen. These high-stakes games show competitive dynamics that differ from the markets in which many competitors co-exist relatively peacefully, because they often have a single tipping point which shifts market adoption towards one particular technology. With his dissertation The Emergence of De Facto Standards, Simon den Uijl fills the gap of academic knowledge with a robust clarification of how firms can shape the chances of their technology becoming the de facto standard.

Den Uijl’s research shows that although there are many elements involved, companies can shape the chances of their technology emerging as the de facto standard through strategic decision-making. He dispels the hypothesis that there is one winning formula to make a technology a success. The emergence of a de facto standard displays a unique path that can be divided into six phases, and can be influenced by 34 unique elements including market mechanisms, models for creating a ‘technology bandwagon’, and elements for shaping the chances of the technology being selected. Of these elements, 17 were found to be subject to strategic decision-making; for example pricing, entry timing, strategic partnerships, marketing, and technological superiority.

Industry versus consumers

Historically, the emergence of a de facto standard was determined by the consumer; the market determined the winner according to the technology meeting the customer’s needs. However, industries increasingly compete on platforms; technologies that establish a base of users and complementors (e.g. content providers), whereby both groups reinforce each other. Den Uijl found that in the competition between video formats Blu-ray and HD-DVD, the industry itself determined the outcome for the first time. Once the Hollywood movie studio Warner Bros. dropped support for HD-DVD, the network of complementors tipped towards Blu-ray, and technology corporation Toshiba was forced to forfeit its HD-DVD technology – incurring a US$ 1 billion loss.

The six steps

By combining all these insights, Den Uijl found that companies can enhance the likelihood of winning a format war by applying six steps. These are tightly linked to the six phases, and utilise elements that are subject to strategic decision-making. In the first phase, while doing research and development, the company needs to determine its technological proposition and the extent to which it would like to engage in collaborative development. The second phase involves preparing for market entry when the focus should be on building an organisational community of supporters.Initiating market adoption is the third phase when the firm should focus its efforts on jump-starting the process of increasing returns, for example through setting a low initial price to quickly reach a wide fraction of the market and initiate word of mouth recommendations (penetration pricing). In the fourth phase, the initiative needs to gain ‘critical mass’ by growing the network of customers or complementors to a point that the market will reach a tipping point.

Winning the mass market is the fifth phase; the technology needs to overtake the incumbent de facto standard by focusing on the ‘four Ps’ of marketing (product variety, price, place, and promotion), harnessing economies of scale, and incremental improvements to the technology. In the sixth and last phase, post-dominance, the de facto standard has been established and the focus should be on entrenching the technology by creating ‘lock-in’ that dis-incentivises consumers to switch to an alternative technology, and leveraging the strong position of the technology by expanding into adjacent markets.

Simon den Uijl

Simon den Uijl completed an MSc in Business Administration at RSM. After obtaining his degree, he founded Epyon, a company focused on fast-charging infrastructure for electric vehicles. The company was eventually acquired by Swiss multinational ABB, and is now one of the leading providers of electric vehicle charging infrastructure. Simon is currently Director Standardization at Philips Intellectual Property & Standards. In this position he is involved in establishing lighting-based indoor positioning and wireless lighting connectivity as de facto standards.