Lopsided Schumpeterian competition and the superstar firm phenomenon in OLED flat-panel displays

ABSTRACT

Lopsided Schumpeterian competition and the emergence of ‘superstar’ firms are examined in the flat-panel display industry, where the difficulty of commercialising active-matrix OLED (AMOLED) flat panels led to patterns of innovation and competition vastly dissimilar to those that had prevailed in Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) flat panels. Applying the concept of a Schumpeterian ‘Ultra-Mark II’ technological regime, the study sheds light on how superstar firms build industry dominance through R&D and the building of exclusive supplier networks when their industry (or a certain segment of it) morphs into a quasi-monopolistic type of arena.

KEYWORDS:

• Schumpeterian competition
• OLED industry
• technological regimes
• superstar firms
• market toughness
• AMOLED flat-panel displays

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mark Lehrer

Mark Lehrer is Professor of Strategy and International Business at Suffolk University in Boston, Massachusetts. He obtained his PhD in Management from INSEAD (Fontainebleau, France) after previously studying at MIT and UC-Berkeley. His publications cover a wide variety of subjects around the topics of R&D, innovation, German business, and multinational corporations. In 2020–21 he was a Fulbright scholar in Israel and Germany.

I. Kim Wang

I. Kim Wang is Associate Professor of Strategy and International Business at Suffolk University. She has a PhD from the University of Illinois and has published many articles on innovation, several of which deal with the flat-panel display industry. Drawing on her Taiwanese roots, she tracks the tech scene across Pacific Asia, observing the market traction of emerging technology and studying how mature firms deploy innovation competitively.

Michael Behnam

Michael Behnam became the Dean of the Quinlan School of Business at Loyola University in Fall, 2022. Previously, he was the graduate dean at Suffolk University’s Sawyer Business School. He has presented his research as an invited keynote speaker in Europe, North America, South America, and Africa. He has also consulted and provided executive education to world-renowned organizations like Andersen Consulting, BMW, Bose, DG Bank, IBM, and Siemens.