The Decline of a Technological

In 1965 the Draper Corporation (Draper), the largest domestic textile machine manufacturer, was the 500th largest industrial corporation in the United States [9, July 1965]. Draper had been the world-wide textile machinery technology leader from the development of ring spinning in the 1870s and 80s through the development of automatic looms at the turn of the century and high-speed looms in the 1930s. It was a near monopoly producer of single-shuttle ooms in its home market after the early 1930s until the mid 1960s. In the immediate post-World War II era, direct technological rivalry re-emerged as new competitors introduced shuttleless looms in mill trials. Among the early developers of a commercially viable shuttleless loom, Draper managers were particularly aware of the challenge posed by the pioneering developments in shuttleless weaving at Sulzer Bros., an engineering and science intensive Swiss manufacturer of electricity generating turbines. While Draper was still the world's largest loom producer in 1967, it was increasingly obvious when comparing the wide variety of shuttleless loom prototypes displayed by the 30 exhibitors at the annual textile machinery trade show [21, p. 420], that the Draper shuttleless technology was falling behind in terms of technical performance. Draper had underestimated the competitive threat, particularly from Sulzer Bros. Why and how did the Draper managers tay with an ultimately failing technology development strategy for over 20 years? The infusion of much-needed new resources and their mobilization