Abstract
Improving an interface to increase control over interactions between existing product modules can create new product features which alter the basis of competition in mature (sub)markets. We empirically examine the impact of interface innovation by new market entrants from Japan in the high-end, professional camera submarket between 1955 and 1974. Prior to 1960, the industry architecture of the professional camera submarket was modular, dominated by German specialist body and specialist lens manufacturers. This market structure changed due to the success of integrated Japanese startups who, from 1961, offered novel automated exposure features, facilitated by improving the existing interface between the camera body and lens, and by making this interface a proprietary standard. Their success broke the mirror between the industry architecture, which became vertically integrated, while the product architecture remained modular.
Highlights
The mirroring hypothesis links product modularity with organizational modularity
Mass precision manufacturing may well have enabled Japanese firms to quickly catchup to the quality of European and U.S specialists but, we propose, it was interface innovation that facilitated the development of new product features that led to their dominance in the high-end, professional camera market
The fourth and fifth column indicate the number of cameras that feature automated exposure (AE) and of these, the number manufactured by integrated firms
Summary
The mirroring hypothesis links product modularity with organizational modularity. In a recent review, Colfer and Baldwin (2016) observe there are two categories of cases that violate the mirroring hypothesis: (1) integrated organizations which produce modular products, and (2) modular organizations which produce integrated products. During the late 1950s and 1960s, a number of new Japanese start-ups entered the professional camera sub-market and started to replace the existing mechanical aperture coupling lever (the interface between lens and camera body) with an electrical interface. The need to quickly switch between automated and manual modes directly influenced the early design set-up of AE by manufacturers This highlights the (relatively) simple mechanical solutions that engineers came up with for achieving AE, given the user’s desire to switch between AE and manual operation.
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