This is the fourth post adapted from term papers that my master students submitted in June 2013. This post (originally written by Fanny Avaux, Maxime Georgin, Marie-Laure Le Déodic & Sophie Naert) has been honed and complemented by Olivier Simons. The first browser war took place in the late 1990s when Microsoft’s Internet Explorer replaced Netscape’s […]
Tag Archives | compatibility
Nike+ and its competitors: a running battle?
By 6 March 2013 27
For a few years now, Nike has been operating, in collaboration with Tomtom and Apple, a series of devices that allow walkers and runners to record and follow various parameters related to their walk or run history (like distance, speed, burned calories, …). The concept is the following: the runner trains with a GPS sportwatch […]
Mobile industry in Google’s cross-hairs
By 6 March 2012 14
Though a late-comer to the mobile market, Google has nonetheless made a rather spectacular entrance. Android, its operating system for smartphones, is running on millions of mobile terminals manufactured by other companies under their own brands. The key to Google‘s success is the fact that Android is open-source, and thus freely distributed. This has allowed […]
Network effects and expectations: the Million Dollar Homepage story
By 2 February 2012 38
(Updated 25/02/2013) Network effects are ubiquitous in the digital economy. They refer to the idea that users prefer to be connected to a bigger network than to a smaller one. (For a more precise description of this concept, see the ‘Theory digest’ on this blog). It is when consumers value compatibility that bigger networks become more […]
Network effects
By 2 February 2012 0
Network effects are ubiquitous in the digital economy. They refer to the idea that, for many reasons, users prefer to be connected to a bigger network than to a smaller one. To be more precise, here is a textbook explanation of network effects (see Chapter 20 in Belleflamme and Peitz, 2010): A product is said […]
LEGO: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?
By 13 October 2011 5
Regarding intellectual property management, LEGO may seem to suffer from some form of personality disorder. Over the years, the company has indeed been oscillating between very open and very closed attitudes. On the “open side”, LEGO appears nowadays as a champion of crowd-sourcing and of user-based innovation. LEGO’s recent Cuusoo project is a nice example of crowd-sourcing design, whereby the […]