Raghu Garud
Theresa K. Lant

Silicon Alley is a concentration of firms located in Manhattan, New York, producing and consuming multi-media products. This new industrial field is emerging from the convergence of technologies such as digital multi-media and the world wide web. We found that traditional approaches to the study of industrial fields are not readily applicable in our study of “Silicon Alley”. Manifest in the emergence of culturally ambiguous artifacts, technological convergence is leading to the blurring of traditional industrial boundaries. In such a fuzzy field, participants are adopting partial views of a larger emerging picture. To complicate matters, institutional environments and technologies are co-evolving. These are some of the dynamics underlying the emergence of Silicon Alley that make it difficult to apply traditional approaches to the study of industries. We reflect on these issues and suggest a possible approach to study this and other emerging fields.