We mentioned research by Liebowitz and Margolis that poked some holes in the QWERTY story. In particular, they emphasized that in the age when typing first became common, many corporations had large “typing pools,”

dozens of women (rarely men) who just typed up other people’s handwritten notes. If DVORAK had really been faster than QWERTY, then these corporations could have saved millions of dollars in hourly wages by just retraining their workers with a few days on a DVORAK keyboard. In other words, individuals might choose the wrong standard, but big firms have a tendency to grab the easy money, especially when it’s measured in the millions of dollars. That gives these big players a strong incentive to pick the best standard.

a. With this in mind, which major market players might have pushed for the Blu-ray DVD standard? In other words, which organizations might have a lot of experts on staff to check every detail of the competing high-definition DVD formats? Which organizations would also care about choosing the format consumers would actually prefer two or three years down the road?

b. In future standard wars, do you expect most of the early sales efforts to be directed at regular consumers or instead at “power users,” owners of big retail chains, and other gatekeepers? mki58