Seminar – Keeping an Industry Alive: The Role of Tinkerers in Maintaining a Legacy Technology

Dr Rene Wiedner, Cambridge Judge Business School

How is an industry kept alive following a substantial and sustained drop in consumer demand? Existing explanations focus on firms successfully repositioning themselves and their products by pursuing differentiation strategies, on demand-driven revivals, and on the role of governments in propping up outdated technologies. However, based on a qualitative study of developments in the global vinyl record manufacturing industry between 1990 and 2010, I find that technology enthusiasts (or ‘tinkerers’) may play a critical role in maintaining a technology that most end-consumers and suppliers regard as obsolete. They do so by disseminating resources from a hitherto concentrated corporate domain to a dispersed, amateur domain, which involves ‘scavenging’, ‘tinkering’, developing relationships with industry old-timers and outsiders, and supporting other tinkerers by sharing resources. Depending on the timing of these activities and supportive infrastructure, tinkerers may successfully plug emerging gaps in deteriorating supply chains by repairing and rebuilding a legacy technology, as well as contribute to innovation and stimulate interest in the technology. These findings, obtained via a practice lens that examines how technology is performed, enhance our understanding of the role of stakeholders beyond incumbent firms and product consumers in shaping legacy technologies and associated industries. They also raise awareness of potentially vibrant developments in industries that strategy scholars may prematurely associate with obsolescence.

Speaker bio

Rene obtained his PhD in management studies at Cambridge Judge Business School and is an associate member of St Edmund’s College, University of Cambridge. He also has a Magister degree in International Business Administration from the WU Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration and an MPhil degree in Innovation, Strategy & Organisation from Cambridge Judge Business School. His research focuses on organisational and field level change in health care and the creative industries. Specifically, he has conducted research on change in health care systems management in the National Health Service (NHS), funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Collaborations for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (CLAHRC) and is currently conducting a global study on vinyl record manufacturing in the digital era.