Striving for a Large Market: Evidence from a General Purpose Technology in Action

Several scholars have tried to focus on growth accounting of specific examples of General Purpose Technologies (GPTs). But, what are the factors that might make a General Purpose Technology succeed or fail once the invention has been "triggered"? This paper is a preliminary answer to this question and attempts to study GPTs from an ex-ante perspective trying to understand what is the behaviour and performance of the producer firms and what the factors are that can favour or hamper their diffusion in the application sectors. The paper follows a historical perspective on a control technology, introduced in the last few decades by a Silicon Valley start-up company.