Exploratory assessment of performance of innovations in the evolving personal computer industry

Abstract

This paper studies the evolution of the PC (personal computer) technological system by focusing on the divide between the progressive system member, at the systempsilas performance frontier, and one which is trailing behind this advancing line and hindering potential growth, referred to as the reverse salient. We develop a performance-gap measure of reverse salience and apply it in an empirical study considering the delivery of overall computational performance of the PC system with respect to game play. Furthermore, we explore the relationship between the performance of innovated products and the magnitude of reverse salience. Our results show that the technological performance of the PC game sub-system trails that of the CPU (central processing unit) sub-system at any point in time, between 1996 and 2006, inclusively. The temporal behavior of reverse salience demonstrates a gradually decreasing trend in recent years, suggesting a diminishing technological disparity between the sub-systems. Our paper additionally shows that the magnitudes of technological disparity between co-evolving components do not correspond to product performances.