Dominant Design

Dominant design is a technology management concept identifying key technological designs that become a de facto standard in their market place.

When a new technology emerges (e.g. computer GUI operating systems) – often firms will introduce a number of alternative designs (e.g. Microsoft – Windows, Apple Inc. – Mac OS and IBM – OS2). Updated designs will be released incorporating incremental improvements – at some point an architecture that becomes accepted as the industry standard (Anderson and Tushman, 1990) may emerge (e.g. Microsoft Windows).

Dominant designs may not be better than other designs in the market place, however they will incorporate a minimum required set of key features. The often cited example of the QWERTY keyboard, specifically designed to overcome limitations on the mechanical typewriter but now almost universally preferred over more logical keyboard designs.

Utterback and Abernathy first used the term 'dominant design' in 1975.