Managing disruptive innovation: Entrepreneurship-based strategies and perspectives for agile organizations

Abstract

Extant research on disruptive innovation has implicitly incorporated entrepreneurship as the underlying drivers and mechanisms of the ‘disruptive’ phenomenon. Despite the potential contribution of entrepreneurship-related research streams to the study and practice of innovation, few researchers have attempted to cross-fertilize the two disciplines to better understand disruptive innovation phenomenon. This contribution posits that disruptive innovation can be viewed as an entrepreneurial process with multiple entrepreneurial dimensions at the cognition, action and system level. Drawing on the literature on entrepreneurship, evolutionary theory, open/lead-user innovation, and collective intelligence, we develop a theoretical framework that explains disruptive innovation as a co-evolutionary entrepreneurial process at the firm, product, and customer level. Based on the proposed framework, we then develop several propositions to advance knowledge in the field. Our framework offers pragmatic managerial and policy implications for agile organizations by introducing not less than four strategies to deal with or create disruptive innovation: effectuation, exaptation, lead userness, and collective intelligence. We conclude with implications for future research in disruptive innovation