Found at The Strategic Use of Architectural Knowledge by Entrepreneurial Firms — HBS Working Knowledge.

Entrepreneurial firms rich in knowledge but poor in other resources can use superior architectural knowledge of a technical system to gain strategic advantage over larger and better endowed rivals. This paper presents a model and provides examples showing that architectural knowledge can be applied strategically to change a firm’s scope and boundaries, make innovations more or less autonomous, and change the span of problems it must solve. Key concepts include:

• Architectural knowledge is knowledge about the components of a complex system and how they are related.
• Architectural knowledge includes knowledge about how the system performs its functions; how the components are linked together; and the behavior of the system, both planned and unplanned, in different environments.
• For a small entrepreneurial firm with limited financial resources facing larger rivals, the most valuable architectural knowledge pertains to bottlenecks and remodularizations that isolate the bottlenecks. Such knowledge can form the basis of a small footprint technical architecture that delivers an ROIC (higher return on invested capital) advantage.
• Technical systems that are susceptible to remodularization around bottlenecks are strategic targets of opportunity for entrepreneurial firms. Incumbents risk being displaced by smaller rivals with superior architectural knowledge leading to an ROIC advantage.

To be continued at http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6376.html