Disruptive Innovation: An Intellectual History and Directions for Future Research

Abstract

The concept of disruptive innovation has gained considerable currency among practitioners despite widespread misunderstanding of its core principles. Similarly, foundational research on disruption has elicited frequent citation and vibrant debate in academic circles, but subsequent empirical research has rarely engaged with its key theoretical arguments. This inconsistent reception warrants a thoughtful evaluation of research on disruptive innovation within management and strategy. We trace the theory's intellectual history, noting how its core principles have been clarified by anomaly-seeking research. We also trace the theory's evolution from a technology-change framework-essentially descriptive and relatively limited in scope-to a more broadly explanatory causal theory of innovation and competitive response. This assessment reveals that our understanding of the phenomenon of disruption has changed as the theory has developed. To reinvigorate academic interest in disruptive innovation, we propose several underexplored topics-response strategies, performance trajectories, and innovation metrics-to guide future research.

Exploring the Disruptiveness of Cryptocurrencies: A Causal Layered Analysis-Based Approach

“…This study was set out to explore (i) whether the diffusion of cryptocurrencies represents a disruptive change, and (ii) what is the potential magnitude of this change? To meet this objective, we built on disruptive innovation theory [15,17] (Christensen 1997;Christensen et al 2018) to scrutinize cryptocurrencies as an instance of sociotechnical change [13,[20][21][22] and employed Causal Layered Analysis [23,26] to conceptually examine its disruptiveness.…”

“…Second, we contributed to the disruptive innovation and disruptive change literature (e.g. [17] by using CLA as the foundation of our analytical framework, we describe the potential disruptiveness of an innovation using four layers. This provides a more detailed description of disruptiveness than the dominant two-level approach [13].…”

“…The resulting answer sketched the overview of what has since become known as disruptive innovation theory. In brief, the theory posits that: (i) incumbents ignore the arrival of innovations that enter the market from niche position (originally from the low-end), (ii) incumbents overshoot their offering aims leaving room for simpler and easier offerings, and (iii) incumbents invest in sustaining innovations that fit their existing profitability, but ignore investing in potential new openings that would require new, sometimes even cannibalizing business models to become profitable [12,16,17,27,28].…”

“…As a result, the research question this study addresses is two-fold: (1) does the diffusion of cryptocurrencies represent a disruptive change, and (2) what is the potential magnitude of this change? To this end, we build on disruptive innovation theory [14][15][16][17] to scrutinize cryptocurrencies as an instance of socio-technical change [18][19][20][21][22] and conceptually explore its disruptiveness through the Causal Layered Analysis [23][24][25][26].…”

Business Model Transformation – Challenges for the Management of the Health Care Entity

“…concept are also conducted in the field of adapting business models of incumbent organizations after their disruptions and how these organizations change strategies to cope with new challenges resulting from the changes in the environment (Cozzolino et al, 2018;Snihur et al, 2018). The business model concept is also studied simultaneously with the topic of disruptive innovation (Christensen et al, 2018;Kumaraswamy et al, 2018).…”