Clarifying the Disruptive Innovation Puzzle: A Critical Review

Purpose - Disruptive innovation theory has attracted the interest of researchers and practitioners across many areas, resulting in the development of new business models and strategies. Despite the increasing scholarly attention, its definition has not yet been understood, the understanding of the term 'disruptive' and the complex nature of this innovation has provoked some misinterpretations, and the meaning remains ambiguous. To address this confusion, this article undertakes a critical review of disruptive innovation in an attempt at providing a solid theoretical grounding. Design/methodology/approach - The review examines the key issues of published articles, identified after conducting a search in the Web of Science scholarly database. The analysis highlights the basic definitions of disruptive innovation, showing its evolution, types and its characteristics. This article also examines the behaviours adopted by the actors associated with disruptive innovation (i.e. incumbents, entrants and customers). Findings - Overall, this article finds that disruptive innovation has its own elements to be identified, requiring an in-depth analysis to avoid confusing with other innovation approaches. The findings suggest that disruptive innovation affects businesses and sectors in varied and complex ways because customers from lowend market and mainstream market appreciate this innovation. Further, its impact on practice is huge and incites further efforts in establishing a stronger theoretical grounding. Originality/value - Our research contributes on the evolution of this theory, helping to better understand the phenomenon of disruption and can be used for different types of research settings

Innovation in professional services in a context of disruption

This research is focussed on how large professional services firms in New Zealand innovate in the context of and as a response to potential disruption. The theory of disruptive innovation describes how incumbents can be overwhelmed by innovative new entrants. Typically these new entrants begin in markets which are unattractive to incumbents because they can’t make money there with their existing business models. Therefore, some have claimed that new businesses must be set up, or various dual approaches adopted, to survive against disruptive new entrants. Semi-structured interviews were held with senior members of large professional services firms to understand their perspective on how innovation is managed in their organisation in the context of potential disruption and the capabilities which support them in doing this. From these interviews, a number of themes emerged which were compared with some of the approaches advocated by the literature in terms of responding to potential disruption. The research found that large professional services firms in New Zealand are focussed on how they can enable innovation from within the firm – typically built off the back of client demand and concentrating on how they work differently with clients, using new methodologies and resourcing models – particularly partnering with third parties to play a service aggregator role – to deliver better outcomes for clients and maintain the professional services firms’ incumbency. At the same time, there are some tentative steps to think about how incubation and/or ‘dual organisations’ might be able to test more disruptive, alternative business models

Earth Observation Technologies: Low-End-Market Disruptive Innovation

After decades of traditional space businesses, the space paradigm is changing. New approaches to more efficient missions in terms of costs, design, and manufacturing processes are fostered. For instance, placing big constellations of micro- and nano-satellites in Low Earth Orbit and Very Low Earth Orbit (LEO and VLEO) enables the space community to obtain a huge amount of data in near real-time with an unprecedented temporal resolution. Beyond technology innovations, other drivers promote innovation in the space sector like the increasing demand for Earth Observation (EO) data by the commercial sector. Perez et al. stated that the EO industry is the second market in terms of operative satellites (661 units), micro- and nano-satellites being the higher share of them (61%). Technological and market drivers encourage the emergence of new start-ups in the space environment like Skybox, OneWeb, Telesat, Planet, and OpenCosmos, among others, with novel business models that change the accessibility, affordability, ownership, and commercialization of space products and services. This chapter shows some results of the H2020 DISCOVERER (DISruptive teChnOlogies for VERy low Earth oRbit platforms) Project and focuses on understanding how micro- and nano-satellites have been disrupting the EO market in front of traditional platforms

Hire Education: Mastery, Modularization and the Workforce Revolution

This new research identifies online competency-based learning as the solution to shifting demands for specialized workforce skills and the front runner for disrupting higher education

Dilemma between new and existing technologies: Separation and coexistence of old and new technologies in the Television Development Division of Sony Corporation

Regarding R&D management for long-term coexistence of new and existing businesses within a company in technological transition, development of high technology introduces conflict between existing low and medium technologies (LMT). One solution, organizational separation of old and new technologies, can render the technological resources of separated R&D groups mutually inaccessible, thereby possibly necessitating duplication of investment costs. That situation might be prevented by brief coexistence of separate groups during a transition period. Nevertheless, existing businesses based on LMT often retain large markets despite the success of new businesses. In the television business described herein, a technological shift began in the late 1990s to replace conventional CRT televisions with flat panel displays (FPD), including LCDs and plasma display panels (PDPs). Today, despite great interest in FPD televisions, global shipments in 2006 included 130 million CRT televisions and 46 million FPD televisions. Varying unit prices prevent a simple comparison, but CRT televisions constitute a large, fiercely competitive market. Continued coexistence of old and new businesses demands the contradictory conditions of independence of the two R&D groups while using mutual resources. Sony's case has revealed a single technical development division serving both old and new R&D groups, providing similar new technology for product development while co-ordinating these divisions' interests. The technical development division integrates technological and product development to integrate developed technologies into downstream product development. This integration process, so-called integration of old and new R&D technologies, incorporates lower divisions' technology and expertise into technological development, thereby enabling multiple downstream product development groups to acquire technology and expertise through technology that is integrated with that of other product divisions. The process' implications include the following. New businesses use existing business technology; existing businesses can incorporate new technology.Viewing technological changes as diversification, existing and new businesses can increase opportunities through co-operation.Integration of old and new R&D technologies, Low and medium technologies, Conventional resources, Separated organization, Electronics industry

Professional Judgment in an Era of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Though artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare and education now accomplishes diverse tasks, there are two features that tend to unite the information processing behind efforts to substitute it for professionals in these fields: reductionism and functionalism. True believers in substitutive automation tend to model work in human services by reducing the professional role to a set of behaviors initiated by some stimulus, which are intended to accomplish some predetermined goal, or maximize some measure of well-being. However, true professional judgment hinges on a way of knowing the world that is at odds with the epistemology of substitutive automation. Instead of reductionism, an encompassing holism is a hallmark of professional practice—an ability to integrate facts and values, the demands of the particular case and prerogatives of society, and the delicate balance between mission and margin. Any presently plausible vision of substituting AI for education and health-care professionals would necessitate a corrosive reductionism. The only way these sectors can progress is to maintain, at their core, autonomous professionals capable of carefully intermediating between technology and the patients it would help treat, or the students it would help learn

Review: Disruptive Innovation & Information Technology – Charting a path

While it has been established that the Information technology (IT) capability of an organization contributes to its ability to innovate and respond to threats, very little has been done in understanding the significance, if any, of the role of IT in disruptive innovation (DI) scenarios. This paper systematically reviews prior research on the concept of DI in relation to IT. Importantly, this paper lays out a research agenda for the exploration of IT and IS research on the subject of DI. Topical questions are raised and calls are made for further studies to position the relevance of IT/IS to the maturing discussion of disruptive innovation. Concurrently, a general review of the evolution of the theory of disruptive innovation and its current status is also presented. A framework classifying disruptive innovation based on typology and definitions is demonstrated in tandem with ensuing questions on the role of information technology