Disruptive Innovation: the High-End Market Perspective

Journal of Product Innovation Management, 2008

The concept of disruptive innovation has received much attention in recent years. These innovations can be defined as offering an initially lower performance while at the same time bringing some new attributes to the market. This thesis aims to develop and extend existing theory on disruptive innovation with an emphasis on business models and value networks.

IPSE International Conference on …, 2002

Disruptive innovation is a term used to describe innovation that is of highly discontinuous or revolutionary nature, which is the opposite of evolutionary or incremental innovation. The term is becoming more widely recognised, but a consistent view of what disruptive innovation is or how it is defined is missing. This paper explores the different dimensions of disruptive innovation put forward by different authors and proposes a working definition as a key building block for an European Commission (EC) co-sponsored research project (“DisruptIT”). The working definition will be used to guide the development of the tools and methods that will help organisations enable and manage disruptive innovation as a key competitive strategy.

Journal of Product Innovation Management

Different views exist in the literature regarding which adopter group to target with a go-to-market strategy: early market consumers or consumers in the majority market. Particularly when radical innovations are launched, the approach to the market becomes a critical success factor for firms seeking to recoup their significant investments in these innovation endeavors. Four experimental studies investigate whether and how to differentiate the design of go-to-market strategies, represented as bundles of marketing mix elements consisting of brand name, launch price, message content, and distribution intensity, for different consumer groups. Using the concept of consumer innovativeness, this study distinguishes between the early market of innovative consumers and the majority market populated by consumers low in innovativeness. Applying a signaling framework, the results indicate that the early market can be targeted with a go-to-market strategy signaling exclusive innovativeness; the majority market should be approached with a strategy signaling security. Further, at a signal vehicle level using specific marketing mix elements, the study demonstrates the relevance of adapting the go-to-market strategy for a radical innovation with regard to message content, distribution intensity, and launch price in line with consumer innovativeness. The results also indicate that the adaptation of the two signals and their signal vehicles to the targeted consumer markets is generally not necessary for incremental innovations. The authors discuss the implications of their study for future research and provide managers with recipes of go-to-market strategies for radical innovations when targeting consumers in the early versus majority market.

Creativity and Innovation Management

The literature on disruptive innovation has convincingly explained why many established firms encounter problems under conditions of discontinuous change. Incumbents fail to invest in new technologies that are not demanded by their existing customers. This argument is grounded in resource dependency theory and the associated assumption that existing customers control a firm’s internal resource allocation processes. While the problem of disruptive innovation has been convincingly explained, there is still a need for managerial solutions. We argue that a key reason why such solutions are lacking can be found in the asymmetric assumptions made in the original theory of disruptive innovation. Specifically, we identify two related forms of asymmetry. First, the focal (incumbent) firm is treated as a collection of heterogeneous actors with different preferences, incentives and competencies, whereas firms in the surrounding environment are treated as if they contained no such heterogeneity. Second, the theory of disruptive innovation describes incumbents as controlled by their environment, but has failed to recognize that the environment can also be influenced. In this paper we argue that a more symmetric theory of disruptive innovation — i.e. one that treats all similar entities in the same way — opens up for a range of interesting managerial solutions.

2016

Today’s world of business is increasingly witnessing exemplary firms which introduce new business models, exploit new markets and disrupt established firms in order to create a unique competitive position. Although the theoretical and conceptual posture of this phenomenon is well grounded and explained in the extant literature on disruptive innovation, little is known about strategic logic of this phenomenon. In other words, the managerial paradigm or cognitive and mental model that underlies the orchestration of microand macro-organizational mechanisms of a disruptive move, such as market and technological knowledge, have surprisingly received little attention. In this sense, an analytical review of literature suggests that strategic logic of a disruptive technology can be well presented through the lens of business model (BM) and its innovation. Accordingly, it is argued that business model represents a mental model which underlines activities such as acquisition of market and tec...

As the business market environment continues to shift and long-term stability is not easily attainable with the constant market disruptions and emerging regions. In order to compete on this platform, organizations must maintain flexibility within their business models and strategies to effectively capitalize or respond to market disruptions.

Business & Economic Review

This paper presents a conceptual framework of managerial activities to foster disruptive innovations. Despite wide recognition of managerial role at middle and lower tiers of organization towards shaping its long-term strategy, the existing research, so far, has lacked in explicitly explaining the managerial activities directed towards the development of disruptive innovations. Authors explored the extant literature on disruptive innovation theory and identified three phases of the disruption process where managers at the middle and lower tiers can play an active role. The authors named this role of managers as their disruptive innovation activities (DIA). Furthermore, manager's DIA is explored in the context of existing antecedents of manager's strategic activities and a conceptual framework is proposed along with a resource map for future research, in this direction.

Creativity and Innovation Management, 2009

This paper explores how certain incumbent characteristics influence an established firm's response to disruptive innovation. More specifically, it looks at the challenges a middle size, top segment company faced and how this affected its reaction to the disruptive threat. This is done by conducting an in-depth case study of Hasselblad, a manufacturer of professional cameras. It can be seen in this case study that Hasselblad's limited resources and its niche strategy affected how it managed the transition from analogue to digital camera technology. These characteristics made it difficult to allow experimentation with digital imaging in the main business since the available resources were severely limited and this initially inferior technology could harm the brand image. Instead, Hasselblad pursued collaborations and eventually launched a hybrid camera, which was compatible both with film and digital backs but did not become the expected success. Being close to bankruptcy, the digital resources needed were acquired and the company eventually survived the disruption. In conclusion, this paper argues that the managerial challenges and solutions to the innovator's dilemma depend upon the particular characteristics of incumbents and that this heterogeneity has not been sufficiently captured by previous literature. It also suggests that medium size, top segment firms can survive disruptive innovation through collaboration and acquisitions.

Entrepreneurship & Management eJournal, 2017

This study proposes the concept of disruptive firms: they are firms with market leadership that deliberate introduce new and improved generations of durable goods that destroy, directly or indirectly, similar products present in markets in order to support their competitive advantage and/or market leadership. These disruptive firms support technological and industrial change and induce consumers to buy new products to adapt to new socioeconomic environment. In particular, disruptive firms generate and spread path-breaking innovations in order to achieve and sustain the goal of a (temporary) profit monopoly. This organizational behaviour and strategy of disruptive firms support technological change. This study can be useful for bringing a new perspective to explain and generalize one of the determinants that generates technological and industrial change. Overall, then this study suggests that one of the general sources of technological change is due to disruptive firms (subjects), ra...