Technology standards battles and business networks during the technology life cycle: Propositions and a plan for further research

In this paper we explore the relationship between business networks and technology standards battles for dominance during the technology life cycle. Based on brief reviews of existing theory and research, we relate (1) standard dominance to the technology life cycle, (2) the business network to standard dominance and (3) the technology life cycle to the business network. We expect the technology life cycle to be a moderator of the relationship between the business network and technology standard dominance. We formulate propositions of how size, diversity and density of the business network contribute to standard dominance during the technology life cycle and we propose a way to further study these propositions.