College of Business Administration University of Rhode Island 2004 / 2005

General Purpose Technologies (Bresnahan and Trajtenberg, 1995; Helpman, 1998) have been hitherto conceptualized as upstream technical inventions whose downstream commercialization requires sector-specific complementary investments. This article points up the existence of a different class of general purpose technologies that – unlike the classic cases of dynamos, transistors, and computers – originate downstream as special purpose technologies in specific sectors and then evolve upstream into general purpose technologies through discovery of broader applications that lead to design breakthroughs in product embodiment of the technology. The evolving design of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software exemplifies this process of „technology generalization.“ Technology generalization is related to the process of technological convergence (Rosenberg, 1972; 1976), but lays the emphasis on design improvements enabled by the accumulation of experience and exposure to multiple environments rather than on changes in industry structure.