Conclusion

Over a period of 15 years, between 1985 and 2000, the Swatch Group underwent profound change, which transformed it from a disparate conglomerate of weakly integrated Swiss watchmaking firms into a centralized, rationalized, and globalized multinational company Whereas during the 1990s and the 2000s its Japanese rivals continued their stubborn race for technological innovation, which they saw as the driving force of a possible new phase of growth, the Swatch Group managed to establish itself as the world’s leading watchmaking group without introducing any fundamental innovation in the technical field. This “non-technological innovation”, as Jeannerat and Crevoisier call it,1 was primarily based on two complementary policies: the rationalization of the production system, on the one hand, and the adoption of a new marketing strategy, on the other.