The Kronos effect is a term coined by Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu in his 2010 book The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires . It describes how companies that establish early dominance in a period of disruptive innovation will do everything in their power to maintain their first-mover advantage. [1] [2]
The name derives from Greek mythology, in which the Titan Kronos ate his own children in order to preempt the prophecy that one would dethrone him. [3]
In The Master Switch, Wu described the Kronos effect as critical to the history of information technology. In his book, he gives the example of radio pioneer and American business executive David Sarnoff. Sarnoff was originally what Wu described as "a radio idealist," but later in his career when heading the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), he came to view newly emergent FM technology as a threat to incumbent AM businesses including RCA's own NBC network. Sarnoff went on to pressure the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to restrict the growth of FM in a variety of ways, successfully suppressing its widespread adoption for more than thirty years, and proving, Wu wrote, that "the best antidote to the disruptive power of innovation is overregulation." [3]
The Kronos effect's role in the technological disruption cycle is to hurt innovation, efficiency, openness and decentralization. [4]
Other examples from Wu include:
Edwin Howard Armstrong was an American electrical engineer and inventor who developed FM radio and the superheterodyne receiver system.
The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded in 1919 as the Radio Corporation of America. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Company. In 1932, RCA became an independent company after the partners were required to divest their ownership as part of the settlement of a government antitrust suit.
In business theory, disruptive innovation is innovation that creates a new market and value network or enters at the bottom of an existing market and eventually displaces established market-leading firms, products, and alliances. The term, "disruptive innovation" was popularized by the American academic Clayton Christensen and his collaborators beginning in 1995, but the concept had been previously described in Richard N. Foster's book "Innovation: The Attacker's Advantage" and in the paper Strategic Responses to Technological Threats.
The NBC Symphony Orchestra was a radio orchestra conceived by David Sarnoff, the president of the Radio Corporation of America, the parent corporation of the National Broadcasting Company especially for the conductor Arturo Toscanini. The NBC Symphony Orchestra performed weekly radio broadcast concerts with Toscanini and other conductors and several of its players served in the house orchestra for the NBC Radio Network. NBC encouraged the public’s perception of the Orchestra as a full-time organization exclusively at Toscanini’s beck and call, but Fortune disclosed in 1938 that these instrumentalists played other radio—and, later, television—broadcasts: “the Toscanini concerts have been allocated only fifteen of the thirty hours a week each man works, including rehearsals.”
David Sarnoff was a Russian and American businessman who played an important role in the American history of radio and television. He led RCA for most of his career in various capacities from shortly after its founding in 1919 until his retirement in 1970.
This is an index of articles relating to electronics and electricity or natural electricity and things that run on electricity and things that use or conduct electricity.
KYW is a commercial AM radio station licensed to serve Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is one of the oldest continuously operating radio stations in the United States, originating in Chicago before moving to Philadelphia in 1934. KYW's unusual history includes its call sign of only three letters, beginning with a K, rare for a station in the Eastern United States. It broadcasts an all-news radio format and is branded as "KYW Newsradio". KYW serves as the flagship station of Audacy, Inc. KYW's studios are co-located within Audacy's corporate headquarters in Center City Philadelphia and its transmitter and two-tower directional antenna array are located in Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania.
WQHT is a commercial radio station, licensed to New York, New York, which broadcasts an urban contemporary music format. The station is owned by Mediaco Holding, a subsidiary of the Standard General hedge fund, and operated by Emmis Corporation under a shared services agreement.
WGY is a commercial radio station licensed to Schenectady, New York, carrying a news/talk format which is simulcast full-time over WGY-FM. Owned by iHeartMedia, the station serves Albany, Troy and the Capital District of New York, and is a clear-channel station with extended nighttime range. WGY is one of the first stations in the United States and the oldest to operate continuously in New York State, having launched on February 20, 1922.
Radio broadcasting has been used in the United States since the early 1920s to distribute news and entertainment to a national audience. In 1923, 1 percent of U.S. households owned at least one radio receiver, while a majority did by 1931 and 75 percent did by 1937. It was the first electronic "mass medium" technology, and its introduction, along with the subsequent development of sound films, ended the print monopoly of mass media. During the Golden Age of Radio it had a major cultural and financial impact on the country. However, the rise of television broadcasting in the 1950s relegated radio to a secondary status, as much of its programming and audience shifted to the new "sight joined with sound" service.
The Blue Network was the on-air name of a now defunct American radio network, which broadcast from 1927 through 1945.
TimothyShiou-Ming Wu is a Taiwanese-American legal scholar who served as Special Assistant to the President for Technology and Competition Policy at the United States from 2021 to 2023. He is also a professor of law at Columbia University and a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. He is known legally and academically for significant contributions to antitrust and communications policy, coining the phrase "network neutrality" in his 2003 law journal article, Network Neutrality, Broadband Discrimination. In the late 2010s, Wu was a leading advocate for an antitrust lawsuit directed at the breakup of Facebook.
Sarnoff Corporation was a research and development company specializing in vision, video and semiconductor technology. It was named for David Sarnoff, the longtime leader of RCA and NBC, and had headquarters in West Windsor Township, New Jersey, though with a Princeton address.
The National Broadcasting Company's NBC Radio Network was an American commercial radio network which was in continuous operation from 1926 through 1999. Along with the NBC Blue Network, it was one of the first two nationwide networks established in the United States. Its major competitors were the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), founded in 1927, and the Mutual Broadcasting System, founded in 1934. In 1942, NBC was required to divest one of its national networks, so it sold NBC Blue, which was soon renamed the American Broadcasting Company (ABC). After this separation, the Red Network continued as the NBC Radio Network.
KIT is an AM radio station broadcasting a news/talk format to the Yakima, Washington, United States, area. The station is licensed to Townsquare License, LLC and owned by Townsquare Media. The station features programming from Fox News Radio, Compass Media Networks and Premiere Networks, and Salem Radio Network. The transmitter and broadcast tower are located in southern Yakima along West Washington Avenue near the railroad tracks. The self-supporting tower is 63 m (207 ft) tall.
Norman Winarsky is an American author and angel investor. He was the President of SRI Ventures at SRI International. He is a founder of SRI's venture process, which includes venture and license incubation, seed funding, the Entrepreneur-In-Residence program, and the nVention venture forum.
Fred Lorin Bechly was an American electrical engineer and inventor in the field of color television broadcasting.
Esther Marion Armstrong was the widow of pioneering radio FM inventor Edwin Howard Armstrong. She is notable for continuing — and winning — her husband's patent lawsuits against some of America's largest electronics manufacturers after his suicide. In 13 years of litigation, she was victorious in every battle over her husband's patents, winning financial settlements that restored her vast wealth. In her final years she established awards and took other steps to honor her husband's accomplishments.
WJY was a temporary longwave radio station, located in Hoboken, New Jersey and operated by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), which was used on July 2, 1921, for a ringside broadcast of the Dempsey-Carpentier heavyweight boxing match.
Robert W. Sarnoff was an American businessman best known as the chief executive officer and chairman of the board of Radio Corporation of America (RCA) after assuming those positions on the retirement of his father, David Sarnoff. During his rise through the company's ranks, he was best known for his advocacy of color television.