A study of US government's satellite incumbents and follow-on competitions

In many high technology industries, incumbents routinely find themselves loosing to new entrants as well as established competitors in the battle for leadership across successive generations of new technology. However, the demise of the incumbent is most typically associated with the entry of start-up firms particularly in settings with minimal complementary assets, few intellectual property rights and limited technical expertise. This thesis will explore a different competitive setting - the U.S. Government's unclassified satellite competitions - an arena characterized by deep technical skills, strong and lasting complementary assets and robust IP. Given these strengths, we would expect to find that incumbents would successfully win most competitions. In fact, according to newly gathered data, satellite producers for the U.S. Government have historically experienced an almost 90% loss rate in follow-on satellites competitions. This pattern is prevalent in satellite competitions undertaken by the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA), the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the United States Air Force (USAF) and the United Stated Navy (USN).

Department dc:contributor.department

Management of Technology Program.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Scearce, Paul (Paul Taylor)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Fiona E. Murray.

• Management of Technology Program.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/39503

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/39503