Backward Compatibility to Sustain Market Dominance – Evidence from the US Handheld Video Game Industry

The introduction of a new product generation forces incumbents in network industries to rebuild their installed base to maintain an advantage over potential entrants. We study if backward compatibility can help moderate this process of rebuilding an installed base. Using a structural model of the US market for handheld game consoles, we show that backward compatibility lets incumbents transfer network effects from the old generation to the new to some extent but that it also reduces supply of new software. We also find that backward compatibility matters most shortly after the introduction of a new generation. Finally, we examine the tradeoff between technological progress and backward compatibility and find that backward compatibility matters less if there is a large technological leap between two generations. We subsequently use our results to assess the role of backward compatibility as a strategy to sustain a dominant market position

The macroeconomic dynamics of demographic shocks

The paper employs an extended Yaari-Blanchard model of overlapping generations to study how the macroeconomy is affected over time by various demographic changes. It is shown that a proportional decline in fertility and death rates has qualitatively similar effects to capital income subsidies; both per capita savings and per capita consumption increase in the new steady state. A drop in the birth rate, while keeping the death rate constant, reduces per capita savings, but increases per capita consumption, particularly if intertemporal labor supply is very elastic. If the generational turnover effect is sufficiently strong, however, a decline in the birth rate may, contrary to standard results, gives rise to an increase in per capita savings. Finally, a fertility rate reduction which leaves unaffected the rate of generational turnover is shown to have effects qualitatively similar to those of a fall in public consumption. Both per capita savings and per capita output decline, but per capita consumption rises. The non-linear model is simulated to study the quantitative effects of non-infinitesimal demographic shocks.

Linked lives: the utility of an agent-based approach to modelling partnership and household formation in the context of social care

The UK’s population is aging, which presents a challenge as older people are the primary users of health and social care services. We present an agent-based model of the basic demographic processes that impinge on the supply of, and demand for, social care: namely mortality, fertility, health-status transitions, internal migration, and the formation and dissolution of partnerships and households. Agent-based modeling is used to capture the idea of “linked lives” and thus to represent hypotheses that are impossible to express in alternative formalisms. Simulation runs suggest that the per-taxpayer cost of state-funded social care could double over the next forty years. A key benefit of the approach is that we can treat the average cost of state-funded care as an outcome variable, and examine the projected effect of different sets of assumptions about the relevant social processes

The new shape of the student

This chapter critically examines student characteristics in light of the popular dis-course which describes students as part of a net generation of digital native young people. Digital and networked technologies have clearly changed the possibilities for students to learn and the ways in which teaching and learning can be conducted. It is also claimed that new technologies change what students are able to learn. However the claim that there is a new generation of learners characterized by a new mentality has to be careful assessed in the light of recent empirical evidence. The idea of a generation gap between digitally native students and their digitally immigrant teachers is challenged, as are claims that pressure from this new generation forces radical institutional change on educational institutions. The chapter argues against the generational nature of the argument and separates the technological changes that are taking place from the determinist rhetoric they have been couched in. This rhetoric suggests that changes amongst students are already well understood and that their educational implications are already known and lead to generally applicable if not universal consequences. The chapter concludes by arguing that there is no one shape for students and that digital technologies open up a range of opportunities and choices at all levels of education

Do employees’ generational cohorts influence corporate venturing? A multilevel analysis

Organizations are facing an interesting phenomenon in the composition of theirworkforce: the concurrence of multiple age generations that demand suitablestrategies regarding work design, job satisfaction, and incentives. Ongoingentrepreneurship and strategic management debates require a betterunderstanding of the relationship between workplace generational cohorts’configurations and organizational performance. We propose a conceptual modelfor understanding how a diversified workforce influences some determinants(i.e., employees’ human capital and attitudes, organizational climate, andenvironmental conditions) of entrepreneurial organizations’ outcomes (i.e.,corporate venturing). Our framework offers insights into corporate venturingdeterminants for three generational cohorts: Baby Boomers, Generation X, andGeneration Y. Using a sample of 20,256 employees across 28 countries, ourfindings lend support to the positive effect of individual and organizationaldeterminants on corporate venturing, as well as how these effects are reinforcedper generational cohort. Specifically, our results show that younger generations(millennials) have more propensity to be involved in corporate venturingactivities. This study also contributes to thought-provoking implications forentrepreneurial organizational leaders who manage employees from differentgenerations

Market leadership through technology – Backward compatibility in the U.S. Handheld Video Game Industry

The introduction of a new product generation forces incumbents in network industries to rebuild their installed base to maintain an advantage over potential entrants. We study if backward compatibility moderates this process of rebuilding an installed base. Using a structural model of the U.S. market for handheld game consoles, we show that backward compatibility lets incumbents transfer network effects from the old generation to the new to some extent but that it also reduces supply of new software. We examine the tradeoff between technological progress and backward compatibility and find that backward compatibility matters less if there is a large technological leap between two generations. We subsequently use our results to assess the role of backward compatibility as a strategy to sustain market leadership

The net generation and digital natives: implications for higher education

Executive Summary "Our students have changed radically. Today�s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach." (Prensky 2001 p1) 1. There is no evidence that there is a single new generation of young students entering Higher Education and the terms Net Generation and Digital Native do not capture the processes of change that are taking place. 2. The complex changes that are taking place in the student body have an age related component that is most obvious with the newest waves of technology. Prominent amongst these are the uses made of social networking sites (e.g. Facebook), uploading and manipulation of multimedia (e.g. YouTube) and the use of handheld devices to access the mobile Internet. 3. Demographic factors interact with age to pattern students� responses to new technologies. The most important of these are gender, mode of study (distance or place-based) and the international or home status of the student. 4. The gap between students and their teachers is not fixed, nor is the gulf so large that it cannot be bridged. In many ways the relationship is determined by the requirements teachers place upon their students to make use of new technologies and the way teachers integrate new technologies in their courses. There is little evidence that students enter university with demands for new technologies that teachers and universities cannot meet. 5. Students persistently report that they prefer moderate use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in their courses. Care should be taken with this finding because the interpretation of what is �moderate� use of ICT may be changing as a range of new technologies take off and become embedded in social life and universities. 6. Universities should be confident in the provision of what might seem to be basic services. Students appreciate and make use of the foundational infrastructure for learning, even where this is often criticised as being an out of date and unimaginative use of new technology. Virtual Learning Environments (Learning or Course Management Systems) are used widely and seem to be well regarded. The provision by university libraries of online services, including the provision of online e-journals and e-books, are also positively received. 7. Students do not naturally make extensive use of many of the most discussed new technologies such as Blogs, Wikis and 3D Virtual Worlds. The use of 3D Virtual Worlds is notably low amongst students. The use of Wikis and Blogs is relatively low overall, but use does vary between different contexts, including national and regional contexts. Students who are required to use these technologies in their courses are unlikely to reject them and low use does not imply that they are inappropriate for educational use. The key point being made is that there is not a natural demand amongst students that teaching staff and universities should feel obliged to satisfy. 8. There is no obvious or consistent demand from students for changes to pedagogy at university (e.g. demands for team and group working). There may be good reasons why teachers and universities wish to revise their approaches to teaching and learning, or may wish to introduce new ways of working. Students will respond positively to changes in teaching and learning strategies that are well conceived, well explained and properly embedded in courses and degree programmes. However there is no evidence of a pent-up demand amongst students for changes in pedagogy or of a demand for greater collaboration. 9. There is no evidence of a consistent demand from students for the provision of highly individualised or personal university services. The development of university infrastructures, such as new kinds of learning environments (for example Personal Learning Environments) should be choices about the kinds of provision that the university wishes to make and not a response to general statements about what a new generation of students are demanding. 10. Advice derived from generational arguments should not be used by government and government agencies to promote changes in university structure designed to accommodate a Net Generation of Digital Natives. The evidence indicates that young students do not form a generational cohort and they do not express consistent or generationally organised demands. A key finding of this review is that political choices should be made explicit and not disguised by arguments about generational change

Postindustrialism and postmaterialism? A critical view of the new economy, the information age, the high tech society and all that

The theory of postindustrial society and postmaterialist culture can explain neither the structural uniformities of modern society captured by convergence theory nor the national differences captured by theories of democratic corporatism and the mass society. Its depiction of structural changes is superficial: the service sector is too heterogeneous to describe occupational and industrial trends; the idea of technocratic dominance is overblown and misses big national differences in the location and role of experts and intellectuals. As for postindustrial values, they apply to a small population, a minority even of college students. That these attitudes fluctuate so much with shifting economic conditions and political agendas casts doubt on the idea of a basic shift toward postmaterial values. The literature documenting such shifts is plagued with problems of survey validity. It goes up against a heavy weight of evidence showing that older issues of security, equality, civic order and crime, economic growth and stability are dominant in the politics and mentality of modern populations; that cohort effects are weak to non-existent; that political generational effects are rare and soon fade away; that family life cycle, if carefully delineated, has an impact across a wide range of attitudes and behavior. Most important, differences in national mobilizing structures shape both mass and elite responses to the dilemmas and problems of modern life. Assessing related images of modern society - the information age, the high-tech society - the paper finds these equally misleading. This paper is based on chs. 1 and 4 of H.L. Wilensky, Rich Democracies: Political Economy, Public Policy, and Performance (University of California Press, 2002). --