DECISION SCIENCES INSTITUTE Defining and Predicting Disruptive. Dr. Delmer Nagy Tarleton State University

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1 DECISION SCIENCES INSTITUTE Dr. Delmer Nagy Tarleton State University Dr. Joseph Schuessler Tarleton State University ABSTRACT How can managers determine if a new technology can disrupt an industry or their organization? Academics have sought to help answer this question but it is a difficult one as three essential questions about the idea of disruptive innovations are still outstanding. This paper proposes answers to these three questions and in so doing also provides managers a quick heuristic or guideline to better determine if an innovation could be disruptive to an industry or their organization. A case is given to show how potentially disruptive innovations could be identified before an industry or organizational disruption has occurred. Keywords: Innovation, Technology Adoption, Managerial Decision Making, Organizational Absorptive Capacity INTRODUCTION How can managers determine if a technology will disrupt their industry or organization? This is a question that is not easily answered as the academic community grapples with the idea of disruptive innovations. No less than six papers have sought to identify or define disruptive innovations (Adner 2002, Christensen and Raynor 2003, Danneels 2004, Christensen 2006, Schmidt and Druel 2008, Hang, Chen, and Yu 2011). And academic works have also tried to predict market disruptions caused by new technologies (Paap and Katz 2004, Meyers, Sumpter, Walsh, and Kirchhoff 2002, Schmidt and Druehl 2008, Govindarajan and Kopalle 2006, Hang, Chen, and Yu 2011). This body of work has raised three essential questions. First, what is a disruptive innovation? Second, how can disruptive innovations be disruptive to some adopters and yet incremental or sustaining to others? Third, how can disruptive innovations be predicted before an industry or organizational disruption has occurred? Given that the academic community grapples with these questions how can managers be expected to determine if a new technology will be disruptive to their organization or industry? Answer to these questions are proposed by shifting the focus of the definition of a disruptive innovation from an as yet unidentified innovation characteristic to an alignment of an innovation s technical standard, functionality, or ownership with the existing counterparts in industry or an organization. Redefinition allows managers to use the value chain to potentially

2 identify disruptive innovations relative to an industry or an organization before the disruption has occurred. This paper is structured as follows: the literature review first seeks to define what a disruptive innovation is. Second, an explanation about the relative effects of disruptive innovations is given. Third, a method for potentially identifying disruptive innovations before these disruptions occur is proposed. This is followed by a case that outlines this method. The paper wraps up with a discussion and a conclusion that outline the potential benefits of this redefinition and potential applications for practitioners as well as potential research areas for academics. LITERATURE REVIEW What is a disruptive innovation? The definition of a disruptive innovation is difficult to pin down as Christensen himself has stated that some innovations are disruptive to one group, while the same innovation can be sustaining to another group (Adner 2002, Christensen et. al 2000, Christensen and Raynor 2003, Danneels 2004, Schmidt and Druel 2008). This relativity or uncertainty as to how to define a disruptive innovation has puzzled many academics and leaves managers without grounding to decide how a potential technology could affect their industry or organization. Indeed in an effort to define disruptive innovations two distinctly different definitions of disruptive innovations have been proposed (Schmidt 2008, Danneels 2004, Thomond and Lettice 2002, Adner 2002). The first definition of disruptive innovations focuses on the functional quality and cost of the innovation. This definition defines disruptive innovations as an innovation with good enough functionality that has a low cost (Christensen, Baumann, Ruggles, and Sadlter 2006, Christensesn, Johnson and Horn 2010, Christensen, Bohmer, and Kenagy 2004, and Paap and Katz 2004, Thomond and Lettice 2002). Theoretically the lower quality and lower priced innovation incrementally improves until, one day, the innovation competes with market leading products, disrupting the market status quo. Defining disruptive innovations as lower quality products that compete on price does not appear to be an appropriate innovation characteristic to define a typology of technologies. Competition on price and quality are commonly accepted business strategies (Besanko, Dranove and Shanley 1996). This definition focuses on business strategies regarding market entry and overlooks specific innovation characteristics that create changes in customer expectations that could disrupt existing, or potentially create new, markets. The second definition of disruptive innovations focuses not on an innovation s cost or quality, but on market characteristics. Danneels, Markides, and Tellis advocate that disruptive innovations change the performance metrics, or consumer expectations, of a market (Danneels 2004, Markides 2006, Tellis 2006). This definition moves the discussion of what constitutes a disruptive innovation forward, as it shifts the focus from a specific innovation characteristic to the alignment of an innovation with market expectations. However this definition it does not address the problem of identifying disruptive innovation characteristics. Specifically, which innovation characteristic is disruptive to one group but sustaining to another group? This still leaves the definition of a disruptive innovation as somewhat vague as a specific innovation characteristic is not identified. Literature Review - Identifying Disruptive Innovation Characteristics

3 Neither extant definition of disruptive innovations identifies a specific innovation characteristic that can be disruptive. Rather, both definitions focus on factors external to the innovation, specifically market factors, i.e. costs, quality, performance metrics, and/or customer expectations. Therefore, this paper proposes that innovation adoption theories, specifically those theories addressing innovation characteristics, be drawn upon to identify specific innovation characteristics that can cause marketplace disruptions. Two innovation characteristics that have been identified in innovation adoption literature as having the potential to change markets are radical functionality and discontinuous technical standards (Thomond and Lettice 2002). These attributes, radical functionality and discontinuous technical standards, can be found in one form or another in several innovation adoption theories (Rogers 1995, Swanson 1994, and Attewell 1992). Perhaps the exemplar innovation adoption theory is Innovation Diffusion Theory (IDT) which proposes five innovation attributes: relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability, as influencing innovation adoption (Rogers 1995). Relative advantage specifically identifies the functionality of an innovation as influencing the adoption of a technology. This attribute, relative advantage, also recognizes that innovation functionality is not absolute between technologies. As the name of the construct implies, functionality is relative between technologies and between users. IDT constructs of compatibility and complexity are directly tied to the technical standard of an innovation. Compatible technologies have similar technical standards while complex technologies have new technical standards or new functionalities that create a knowledge barrier for users (Attewell 1992). Complexity forces adopters to overcome knowledge barriers to maximize the effectiveness of the new technology (Attewell 1992). The final two attributes, observability and trialability, have links to marketplace awareness or distribution channels and are not innate innovation characteristics. Rather these characteristics are how the innovation is presented within a marketplace (Rogers 1995). The ideas of functionality and technical standard as influencing technology adoption are further refined in the extensions and modifications of adoption theories in the realms of radical and discontinuous innovations. For example ideas around radical innovations have been explored in conjunction with firm organization (O Connor and DeMartino 2006), organizational strategy and structure (Ettlie, Bridges and O Keefe 1984), context (Germain 1996), and organizational adoption (Dewar and Dutton 1986). Theories that highlight innovation attributes reinforce the idea that innovation characteristics of functionality and technical standards are relative to other innovations (Rogers 1995, Henderson and Clark 1990, Tushman and Anderson 1986, and Abernathy and Utterback 1978). Nord and Tucker clearly identified an innovation that was radical to some but incremental to others, based upon existing organizational technologies and business practices (Nord and Tucker 1987). By focusing on how functionality and technical standards fit, or relate with, other technologies in the marketplace or in an organization, academics can better explain why an innovation is disruptive to one group while sustaining to another. Specific innovation characteristics are now identified. Furthermore the relativity of innovation characteristics can be used to compare technologies used in organization s or in market s to determine if a new innovation will have potentially disruptive effects on an organization or a marketplace.

4 A third innovation characteristic that appears to influence the disruptiveness of an innovation is not a characteristic of the innovation itself, but rather the forms of ownership of an innovation. Ownership models have established effects on business, influencing factors both inside and outside of organizations. Inside organizations, ownership has influenced costs, employee motivation, and organizational performance (Huang, Tung-Chun 1997). Outside organizations, ownership models have influenced resource utilization and development, forms of sales, and services associated with innovations (Stam and Wouter 2009). Because of the many effects ownership can have on innovations, alternative forms of ownership in established industries poses a threat to disrupt the status quo of these industries. For example, open source software is widely recognized as disrupting some segments of the software industry and is doing so without radically different functionality or new technical standards. The disrupting factor associated with open source software is the ownership of the software as this type of software has no single definitive owner (Crowston, Wei, Howison and Wiggins 2012). Rather this software is disrupting some segments of the software industry as it is provided by a group of volunteers who collectively create, manage, support, and distribute the technologies (Lakhani and Von Hippel 2003). While this type of ownership does not raise questions about the functionality or technical standard of the technology, it does raise questions about the services and responsibilities associated with the software raising questions about marketplace expectations (Crowston, Wei, Howison and Wiggins 2012). This paper proposes that these existing theoretically recognized constructs: functionality, technical standard, and ownership, can be combined with existing definitions of disruptive innovations, to not only better define disruptive innovations, but also enable business professionals to potentially identify innovations with disruptive effects before a marketplace disruption has occurred. By refining Danneels, Markides, and Tellis definition, a disruptive innovation is defined as an innovation that changes the performance metrics, or consumer expectations, of a market by providing radically new functionality, discontinuous technical standards, or through new forms of ownership. This new definition provides three theoretically grounding innovation characteristics that can potentially disrupt existing industries or organizations. By examining how functionality, technical standards, or ownership relate to or fit with existing innovations in an industry or used by organizations, the disruptive potential for an innovation can be estimated before a drastic marketplace or organizational change occurs. Literature Review - Predicting Marketplace Disruptions Because the marketplace changes caused by disruptive innovations can have extreme effects on businesses and marketplaces several papers have proposed methods to predict marketplace disruptions (Sood and Tellis 2006, Paap and Katz 2004). Similar to the definition of disruptive innovations, the prediction of disruptive effects has taken two different paths; the first focuses on modeling diffusion patterns while the second centers on an evolutionary approach to technology. By identifying market forces, relative market sizes, and the ability of an innovation to create new markets, Linton created a model to determine the disruptiveness of an innovation (2002). He used a Bass formula contextualized around these variables and was able to provide confirmatory evidence of marketplace disruptions due to changes in technology. Schmidt and Druehl took a similar approach to identify disruptive innovations (Schmidt and Druehl 2005). Instead of using a Bass formula, these models focused on market diffusion curves of technologies which were again able to confirm marketplace disruptions caused by new

5 technologies. While able to confirm marketplace disruptions, these models were confirmatory in nature and did not predict the potential disruptiveness of an innovation. The second path to identify disruptive innovations has led to a discussion of technological stages or the evolution of a technology. Paap and Katz exemplify this approach by proposing three different cases that can potentially change the dominant technology of an industry or market (2004). The first case highlights how an established technology matures to become the dominant driver of an industry. The second case focuses on user needs and how a new technology may better meet user needs than an established technology. Finally the third case stresses how environmental changes may create new drivers for technologies, causing the technologies to evolve to meet environmental changes. Meyers, Sumpter, Walsh, and Kirchhoff proposed similar evolutionary stages for disruptive innovations as innovations go from proof of concept to widespread market adoption (2002). Both papers posit that disruptive innovations evolve relative to other technical standards, functionality, or to customer expectations. These works lend credence to the definition of a disruptive innovation proposed in this paper, and highlight where potentially disruptive innovations may be identified: innovation functionality, innovation technical standards, or environmental effects. Therefore these works will be used as the foundation for potentially identifying disruptive innovations before disruptions in a marketplace or in an organization are caused. To identify potentially disruptive innovations organizations need to understand how a technology relates to the organization itself and to the marketplaces that the organization serves. This process is broken into steps. First an organization needs to identify a candidate technology and recognize where the innovation is used within an organization s value chain. Is the innovation used in an internal process, or is the innovation a direct competitor or substitute for an organization s products or services? This distinction becomes important as it determines what the disruptive effects of the innovation will be. The second step is to determine an innovation s potential disruptive effects. If an innovation competes with or substitutes for an organization s end product or service that innovation has a primary effect. This primary effect has the potential to threaten an industry by radically changing marketplace preferences as the innovation can directly compete with an organization. If an innovation is used by an internal process, or in a single value chain segment, then the innovation has a secondary effect. This innovation may cause changes within an organization, altering how some activities are performed, but does not alter marketplace preferences for that organization. This type of innovation has secondary effects as these effects are limited inside the organization and to organizational processes but do not affect marketplace preferences. The third step in identifying a potentially disruptive innovation is to understand how the characteristics of the innovation align relative to existing technologies used by the organization or that are offered in the marketplace. This draws upon the definition of a disruptive innovation proposed by this paper, as organizations can examine the functionality, technical standards, and forms of ownership of the innovation. If one or more of these innovation characteristics is different from existing organizational or marketplace preferences, then that innovation has the potential to be a disruptive innovation. The following section provides an example of the three step process to identify a potentially dissruptive innovation. MODEL THE CASE OF 3D PRINTING

6 Three dimensional printing, or 3D printing, is a technology invented in the early 1980 s. These printers layer or spray plastic and/or other materials in three dimensions to produce a form. Forms can take a variety of shapes and are typically used to prototype designs. Many industries, from architecture to medicine, use these forms (Giannatsis, & Dedoussis, (2009), Utela, Storti, Anderson, & Ganter (2008)). Advances in 3D printing have moved the technology beyond simple plastic forms to now include more complex shapes and designs as plastic can be combined with different materials (Giannatsis, & Dedoussis, (2009), Utela, Storti, Anderson, & Ganter (2008).). To examine the potential disruptiveness of 3D printing the three step process begins with identifying where a 3D printer is relative to an organization. If an organization s primary operations focus on manufacturing plastic components, then 3D printers may have primary effects for that organization, i.e. 3D printing may be a direct competitor for end markets. If organizations do not focus on manufacturing plastic components, but if plastic components are used within the organization, 3D printing may have secondary effects as 3D printers may alter some segments in an organization s value chain. The second step in determining the disruptiveness of 3D printing is to understand the characteristics of the technology. Does 3D printing represent new functionality, meaning are these printers doing something that no other technology does? Does 3D printing use a different technical standard to accomplish end objectives? How are 3D printers owned? In response to these questions it appears that 3D printing is a new technical standard for creating plastic forms. Rather than using injection molding to create plastic parts, 3D printing sprays, or layers plastic to create a desired part. This is a primary activity of the industry of creating plastic forms. Injection molding was the technical standard for this industry. So while 3D printers have no new functionality, both technologies 3D printing and injection molding produce plastic parts, 3D molding has a new technical standard: the use of a printer as opposed to the use of an injection mold. Finally 3D printers do not have an alternative form of ownership; the machines are traditionally bought and sold as individual items. The third step in understanding the potential disruptiveness of 3D printing is to examine the potential market size and market forces for the technology. Because 3D printing is involved in the manufacture of plastic forms, the market this technology appears to most directly impact is the plastic manufacturing market. The plastic manufacturing market seems to have two primary critical success factors the ability to create large volumes of standardized products and the ability to change production sets to meet production agility. Currently, 3D printing focuses on low volume production with the ability to quickly change production sets. It appears that this technology will disrupt a segment of the plastics manufacturing industry by shifting the technical standard of production for plastic components. Those organizations that focus on low production volume with rapidly changing production sets would appear to need to embrace this new technical standard or face increasing disruptive industry forces. Otherwise it appears that 3D printing will be a support technology for other organizations, perhaps used in maintenance or in prototyping. This new technology may require specialized personnel because of new knowledge or skills needed to optimize the technology. DISCUSSION

7 This paper contributes to the ongoing discussion of disruptive innovations both academically and practically. Academically, two contributions are made. First, by redefining disruptive innovations with innovation adoption constructs of functionality, technical standard, and ownership, a more complete definition for disruptive innovations is proposed: an innovation with radical functionality, discontinuous technical standards, and/or new forms of ownership that redefine marketplace expectations. The second academic contribution of this paper provides insight into a longstanding question associated with disruptive innovations: How can innovations be disruptive to some adopters, but not to others? By redefining disruptive innovations to have specific characteristics, these characteristics can be compared to technologies currently used by an organization. If disruptive innovations have characteristics that are already used by an organization, be it functionality, a technical standard, or a form of ownership, then the innovation will not likely be disruptive to that organization. However if the functionality, technical standard, or form of ownership isn t used by an organization, the innovation has potential to disruptive to that organization or industry. Consequently, because this definition focuses on innovation based characteristics, the disruptiveness of an innovation appears to be relative; innovations can be disruptive to some organizations but not to others. Practically the redefinition of disruptive innovations leads to the potential identification of disruptive technologies before drastic marketplace changes are made. Practitioners can estimate the effects of potentially disruptive innovations by following a three step method outlined in this paper. This process begins by identifying where a given technology is located within an organization s value chain; does that innovation have primary or secondary effects. This step helps the organization understand the relative effect of the innovation upon the organization. For example, if the new innovation is used in a supporting role within the organization then the technology will likely have secondary effects on the organization. However if the disruptive innovation is the main focus of operations of an organization, or primary effects, the likelihood of that innovation disrupting the organization and its marketplace is greatly increased. The innovation may become a direct competitor in an organization s markets or even have the potential to displace the organization s products within the marketplace. After the relative placement within an organization s value chain is established, the disruptive dimension of the technology needs to be identified. This uses the definition put forward in this paper, highlighting the functionality, technical standard, and forms of ownership of the innovation. The disruptive dimensions of the innovation are then used in the final step, relating these dimensions to existing marketplaces. This involves estimating how much of a marketplace a disruptive innovation can change based upon these characteristics; from small segments of a market to the entirety of a marketplace. While this paper moves the discussion of disruptive innovations forward it also merits further research. The current methodology for potentially identifying disruptive innovations is unrefined as the assessment inside an organization s value chain, an innovation s characteristics, and marketplace alignment is not quantitatively based. New research needs to be conducted that will quantify these different areas. Work has already been done to measure radical functionality of innovations (Green, Gavin, & Aiman-Smith (1995), Dahlin, & Behrens, (2005). Given the refined definition of disruptive innovations radical functionality of new innovations should be measured from two points. First, the overall radicalness of an innovation s function relative to existing marketplace offerings

8 needs to be measured. The second measure of potential disruptiveness would be the radicalness of a new innovation s functionality with an organization s current technical offerings. These two measures would need to be reconciled to assess the overall functional radicalness of a given innovation. Similar measuring of technical standards is needed to quantitatively assess disruptive innovations. Technical standards would also need to be measured from both an organization s perspective and the marketplace. Measurements from both perspectives would need to be reconciled for an assessment to work. Finally understanding how different forms of ownership affect innovations appears to be an area ripe for research. For example, how do different forms of ownership affect a given innovation? How does ownership impact the economic flow associated with a given innovation from supplier to retailer to end consumer? For firms where an innovation is a support function, it may be better to outsource that function, and by extension, that innovation, rather than develop the competence needed for that technology. In addition to these questions surrounding innovation characteristics the methodology needs to be applied to new technologies to both confirm where the three-step method applies, and where it does not apply. Cases where this three-step method does not apply would appear to be particularly interesting as these cases would allow for further refinements in predicting disruptive innovations. CONCLUSION In 1995 Bower and Christensen labeled an ongoing business phenomenon, dynamic marketplace changes, resulting from new innovations as disruptive innovations (Christensen 1999). Since being labeled, business research has confirmed that this type of innovation exists, but has struggled to identify specific characteristics to better understand this phenomenon. This paper identifies specific innovation characteristics that help move this discussion forward. Additionally these innovation characteristics can be used by managers as a heuristic to determine if an innovation could be disruptive to their industry or organization before a disruption has occurred. This investigation into disruptive innovations will surely continue as new technologies emerge. New fields are advancing, nano-technology, gene therapy, new forms of energy; and as new innovations are created, and it will become increasingly important to understand how these technologies can potentially impact both marketplaces and organizations. REFERENCES Abernathy, W. J., & Utterback, J. M. (1978). Patterns of industrial innovation. Journal Title: Technology review. Ariel, 64, Adner, R. (2002). When are technologies disruptive? a demand based view of the emergence of competition. Strategic Management Journal, 23(8), Anderson, P., & Tushman, M. L. (1990). Technological discontinuities and dominant designs: A cyclical model of technological change. Administrative science quarterly, Attewell, P. (1992). Technology diffusion and organizational learning: The case of business computing. Organization Science, 3(1), 1-19.

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