Dominant design is a technology management concept introduced by James M. Utterback and William J. Abernathy in 1975, identifying key technological features that become a de facto standard. A dominant design is the one that wins the allegiance of the marketplace, the one to which competitors and innovators must adhere if they hope to command significant market following.
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 – OS/2). Updated designs will be released incorporating incremental improvements. At some point, an architecture that becomes accepted as the industry standard may emerge, such as Microsoft Windows. The dominant design has the effect of enforcing or encouraging standardization so that production or other complementary economies can be sought. Utterback and Suarez (1993) argue that the competitive effects of economies of scale only become important after the emergence of a dominant design, when competition begins to take place on the basis of cost and scale in addition to product features and performance.