CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 3,504Product Development and CustomizationDigital Platforms and EconomicsAdvanced Software Engineering Methodologies

Design Rules: The Power of Modularity

Baldwin, Carliss Y., Clark, Kim B.·2000·The MIT Press eBooks
DOI 10.7551/mitpress/2366.001.0001
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

We live in a dynamic economic and commerical world, surrounded by objects of remarkable complexity and power. In many industries, changes in products and technologies have brought with them new kinds of firms and forms of organization. We are discovering news ways of structuring work, of bringing buyers and sellers together, and of creating and using market information. Although our fast-moving economy often seems to be outside of our influence or control, human beings create the things that create the market forces. Devices, software programs, production processes, contracts, firms, and markets are all the fruit of purposeful action: they are designed. Using the computer industry as an example, Carliss Y. Baldwin and Kim B. Clark develop a powerful theory of design and industrial evolution. They argue that the industry has experienced previously unimaginable levels of innovation and growth because it embraced the concept of modularity, building complex products from smaller subsystems that can be designed independently yet function together as a whole. Modularity freed designers to experiment with different approaches, as long as they obeyed the established design rules. Drawing upon the literatures of industrial organization, real options, and computer architecture, the authors provide insight into the forces of change that drive today's economy.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.7551/mitpress/2366.001.0001

Cites

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

We couldn’t retrieve this paper’s full text, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • As products become increasingly modular and knowledge is distributed across organisations, firms recognise an increasing requirement to collaborate with other firms both formally and informally.

    “As products become increasingly modular and knowledge is distributed across organisations (Baldwin and Clark, 2000) firms recognise an increasing requirement to collaborate with other firms both formally and informally.”

    From Networking and innovation: a systematic review of the evidence (2004) · cites this paper as Baldwin and Clark, 2000

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Baldwin, C. Y., & Clark, K. B.
ORCID
Venue
The MIT Press eBooks
Publisher
The MIT Press
Published
2000
DOI
10.7551/mitpress/2366.001.0001
OpenAlex
W1540343830
Cited by
3,504
References
0
Citations by year
2026: 169 · 2025: 124 · 2024: 112 · 2023: 129 · 2022: 118 · 2021: 130 · 2020: 156 · 2019: 136 · 2018: 186 · 2017: 153 · 2016: 155 · 2015: 186 · 2014: 170 · 2013: 188 · 2012: 180
FWCI
52.54
Type
book
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
The MIT Press eBooks (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Management of Technology and Innovation › Product Development and Customization
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Strategy and Management › Digital Platforms and Economics
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Advanced Software Engineering Methodologies
Keywords
design rules, modularity, industrial dynamics, computer industry, innovation, industrial organization, real options, computer architecture, subsystems, economic change

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review