A Study of Innovation Based it Convergence as a Strategic Roadmap to Business Performance Acceleration for High End it Vengors: an Insight to the Dynamic Interactive TV Market

Abstract

Even though the technological diffusion and diversification and the associated market divergence and fragmentation have fueled up the global IT market, a significant trend is materialized during the past decade towards the technological convergence. This trend is observed both among companies that operate within the ICT market, where the technology is the business driver, but also among companies operating within different markets, where the technology is just one of the business enablers and attempts have been realized by researchers to study the effected dynamics in both cases.

The aforementioned trend seems to be shaped and encouraged by institutional bodies (The World Bank, EU, National Governments etc.) often leveraging regulation as a master tool, but also by major global field players (commercial vendors, operators, consultancy organizations, banks etc.).

Do diversification and market divergence continue to secure a sustainable competitive advantage in the context of the high – end ICT market or can the convergence of high end technologies empower the process re-engineering to the extend to become the key to the acceleration of the performance of the same businesses? Is innovation the exclusive product of technology diffusion alone or could the technology convergence also found and gear up innovative business services? The Interactive TV market is a typical example of a high-tech, dynamic, innovative IT market where technological divergence seems to compete against technological convergence over the market shares and the business performance consolidation award.

This study is intended to investigate and evaluate the association between IT convergence and business performance acceleration in the context of the high – tech innovative IT market. To serve the interest of the specific study, the dynamic Interactive TV market is going to be used as a typical example of a high-tech, rapidly evolving, intensely diffused and diverged, innovative IT market. Through the insight to the specific market, the contribution of innovation geared technology convergence to the convergence of the various business models operated within the different segments of the same high – tech IT market and the effected business process re-engineering is going to be analyzed. Furthermore, the relation and the dynamics of the associated business network simplification are going to be examined. Are there emerging opportunities for organizations to benefit from were technologies converge? Can organizations use the convergence of their utilized and commercialized technologies as a strategic tool to create and leverage market changes rather than spending resources and lining up to predict and respond to the latter?