The impact of component modularity on design evolution
Subtitle: evidence from the software industry
By: Alan MacCormack, John Rusnak, Carliss Y. Baldwin
Contributors: Rusnak, John; Baldwin, Carliss Y. (Carliss Young); Harvard Business School
Series: Working paper / Harvard Business School -- 08-038; Working paper (Harvard Business School) -- 08-038
Publisher: Harvard Business School
Published: 2007
Place of publication: Boston]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 36
Description: Much academic work asserts a relationship between the design of a complex system and the manner in which this system evolves over time. In particular, designs which are modular in nature are argued to be more "evolvable," in that these designs facilitate making future adaptations, the nature of which do not have to be specified in advance. In essence, modularity creates "option value" with respect to new and improved designs, which is particularly important when a system must meet uncertain future demands. Despite the conceptual appeal of this research, empirical work exploring the relationship between modularity and evolution has had limited success. Three major challenges persist: first, it is difficult to measure modularity in a robust and repeatable fashion; second, modularity is a property of individual components, not systems as a whole, hence we must examine these dynamics at the microstructure level; and third, evolution is a temporal phenomenon, in that the conditions at time t affect the nature of the design at time t+1, hence exploring this phenomenon requires longitudinal data. In this paper, we tackle these challenges by analyzing the evolution of a successful commercial software product over its entire lifetime, comprising six major "releases."
Notes: "December 2007"--Publisher's web site.

Includes bibliographical references.