Disruptive Innovation: An Intellectual History and Directions for Future Research

• Author: Elizabeth J. Altman,Jonathan E. Palmer,Clayton M. Christensen,Rory McDonald
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12349
• Published date: 01 November 2018
• Date: 01 November 2018

© 2018 The Authors

Journal of Ma nagement Studies published by John W iley & Sons Ltd and

Society for the A dvancement of Management Studie s

Disruptive Innovation: An Intellectual History and

Directions for Future Research

Clayton M. Christensen, Rory McDonald,

Elizabeth J. Altman and Jonathan E. Palmer

Harvard Business School; Harvard Business School; Manning School of Business, University

of Massachusetts Lowell; Harvard Business School

ABST RACT The concept of disrupt ive innovation has gained considerable cur rency among

practitioners despite w idespread misunder standing of its core principles. Simi larly,

foundational researc h on disruption has elicited frequent citation a nd vibrant debate in

academic circles, but subse quent empirical resea rch has rarely engaged with its key t heoretical

arguments. T his inconsistent reception warrant s a thoughtful evaluation of research on

disruptive i nnovation within management and str ategy. We trace the theor y’s intellectua l

history, noting how its core pri nciples have been clar ified by anomaly-seeking r esearch. We

also trace t he theory’s evolution from a technology-change fra mework—essentially descriptive

and relatively li mited in scope—to a more broadly explan atory causal theory of innovation

and competitive response. T his assessment reveals that our under standing of the phenomenon

of disruption ha s changed as the theory has developed. To reinvigorate a cademic interest in

disruptive i nnovation, we propose several underexplored topics—resp onse strategies,

performance trajec tories, and in novation metrics— to guide future research.

Keywords: competit ive strategy, disrupt ive innovation, innovation metric s, systemic industries ,

technology trajectories

INTRODUCTION

The theory of disruptive innovation1 presents some intriguing inconsistencies.

The original concept has gained widespread currency among practitioners, and

the term disruption ha s entered the prevailing business lexicon (Christensen et al.,

Journal of Managem ent Studies 55:7 November 2018

doi: 10.1111/jom s.123 49

Address for reprints: Elizabet h J. Altman, M anning School of Bu siness, Universit y of Massachus etts

Lowell, One University Avenue, PTBC 3 56, Lowell, MA 01854, USA (elizabeth_a ltman@uml.edu).

This is an open acce ss art icle under the terms of t he Creative C ommons Attr ibution-NonC ommercial-

NoDerivs License, wh ich permits use and distr ibution in any medium, provided the orig inal work

is properly cited, the use i s non-commercial and no modif ications or adaptations are ma de.

1044 C. M. Christensen et al.

© 2018 The Authors

Journal of Ma nagement Studies published by John W iley & Sons Ltd and

Society for the A dvancement of Management Studie s

2015). Meanwhile, however, the theory’s core concepts remain widely misunder-

stood (Christensen, 2006; Raynor, 2011a). As an applied field, management seeks

to develop prescriptive advice for practitioners (Gulati, 2007; Hambrick, 1994;

Tushman and O’Reilly, 2007); disruption theory is likely to occupy a prominent

position on any assessment of relevance. But despite extensive citations of the

foundational work in such diverse academic fields as innovation, technology strat-

egy, organization theor y, marketing, economics, and healthcare (Di Stefano et al.,

2012), and vibrant debate about the underlying theoretical concepts (Christensen,

2006; Danneels, 2004; G ans, 2016; Henderson, 2006; King and Tucci, 2002; Slater

and Narver, 1998; Sood and Tellis, 2005, 2011 ; Utterback and Acee, 2005), man-

agement research that directly builds on disruptive innovation’s core concepts

has exhibited a surprisingly uneven trajectory.

A related issue is overuse of disruptive innovation/disruption as a synonym for any

new threat (or substantial ongoing change) and underuse of disruptive innova-

tion as a theoretical concept. Many popular writers invoke disruptive innovation

to describe any new technology or startup that aims to shake up an industry and

alter its competitive patterns; previously successful incumbents facing difficulties

or going out of business are routinely said to have been disrupted (Christensen

et al., 2015). Conflating disruptive innovation with any generic threat (and ig-

noring its more precise theoretical meaning) creates two potential risks. First,

when the core ideas of prior work are obscured by indiscriminate use of its ter-

minology, researchers will face difficulty building on and extending that work.

This risk is especially pronounced in this case, given the widespread invocation of

disruption-related terminology in academic journals, practitioner-oriented pub-

lications, and books in multiple disciplines. Second, practitioners who rely on in-

correct or misleading renditions of disruptive-innovation theory may be tempted

to apply faulty ideas, reducing their chances of success. Given the contingent

nature of disruption theory, applying a one-size-fits-all solution is a particularly

egregious mistake.

To address this situation and to invite renewed scholarly attention to disruptive

innovation (e.g., Ansari et al., 2016), we undertake two tasks aimed at a single ob-

jective. First, we offer an updated and integrated conceptualization of disruptive

innovation by drawing on studies from academic journals, practitioner outlets,

and books. Our aim is to present a coherent perspective on the theory, tracing

its intellectual history as it has evolved from a descriptive account of responses to

technology change to a normative theory of innovation and competitive response.

Here, we contribute by offering several points of clarification to a comprehensive,

though scattered, literature, and by providing a unified theoretical base on which

subsequent researchers can build. Second, in an effort to reinvigorate academic

interest and spur exciting new research on disruptive innovation in management,

we propose three novel topic areas that build on this newly unified base: response

strategies, performance trajectories, and innovation metrics. These areas appear

ripe for exploration; scholars who tackle them have the potential to enrich the

theory of disruptive innovation and to extend its trajectory of improvement.

Disrupt ive Innovation 1045

© 2018 The Authors

Journal of Ma nagement Studies published by John W iley & Sons Ltd and

Society for the A dvancement of Management Studie s

After outlining our research approach, we will describe the origins of the the-

ory. Via a conceptually-focused review of the relevant literature, we will then lay

out the basic tenets of disruptive innovation and trace major turning points in its

evolution. Paying particular attention to how anomalies2 have shaped and refined

the theory over time, we point out some problems encountered in applying the

theory, how they arise, and why precision matters for scholarship in this domain.

Building on the newly unified theoretical base we present here, we then elaborate

on the three novel topic areas and discuss their implications for research and

practice.

REVIEWING RESEARCH ON DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION

Our conceptually-focused review of research relevant to the theory of disruptive

innovation closely adhered to the procedures employed in other theory-focused

reviews (see for example Zhao et al., 2017), progressing through three phases. In

the first phase, we looked for broad patterns in references to early formulations

of disruption theory by searching t he Web of Science database for all academic

articles citing Bower and Christensen (1995), Christensen and Bower (1996), or

Christensen (1997). To pinpoint differences across academic domains over time,

we distinguished between articles published in management journals and those

published elsewhere, between 1993 and 2016. This procedure yielded 1,024 aca-

demic articles (513 in management) that cited the three foundational works.

In the second phase, we examined uses of disruption theory terminology. To

gauge uses by scholars, we searched the Web of Science database for all academic

articles in management published between 1993 and 2016 that mentioned spe-

cific disruption terminology (‘disruptive technology,’ ‘disruptive technologies,’

or ‘disruptive innovation’). To gauge uses by journalists and practitioners, we

searched Factiva and Lexis Nexis databases for all general-interest articles pub-

lished between 1993 and 2016 mentioning any of these terms. This procedure

yielded 133 academic articles in management and 66,773 articles in general-in-

terest outlets. Our goal in these first two phases was intentionally explorative and

descriptive: to better understand broad usage trends in both academic and gen-

eral-interest publications.

In the third phase, we used a manual process to determine which academic

works to draw on in our conceptualization of disruptive innovation. One author

and two coders independently reviewed the entire set of articles identified in

the first two phases to determine whether they engaged substantively with the

core concepts of disruption theory; articles deemed by at least two coders to cite

foundational disruption articles in a merely pro-forma way were excluded (Zhao

et al., 2017). We also solicited ideas from several experts—scholars who claimed

disruptive innovation as a core area of interest. They suggested relevant books

and general-interest articles that would otherwise have been difficult to identify

via the process just described. Given our emphasis on intellectual history (rather

than a literature review per se), we relied on prior efforts to trace disruption