Venturing and managing disruptive digital innovations: financial management concept motivated propositions
International Journal of Innovation Science
ISSN: 1757-2223
Article publication date: 21 November 2022
Issue publication date: 23 November 2023
Abstract
Purpose
There are uncertainties concerning how innovators can successfully venture into disruptive innovations and how incumbents can react to the emergence of such innovations. Disruptive digital innovations, which use information technology to disrupt business contexts and can evolve rapidly to either successes or failures, have unique challenges. The literature has largely remained silent concerning these. Also, existing studies often focus on innovations originating in developed economies and just on successful cases. There is a lack of comparative focus on successful and failure cases emerging across economies. The purpose of this paper is to fill these gaps.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper assesses the evolution of disruptive digital innovations in various contexts through a financial management-motivated conceptual framework. Contrary to existing works, this paper focuses on both successful and failure cases and regards the influence of various stakeholders further to innovators and incumbents to explain the successes or failures of the innovation.
Findings
There are some common success factors for disruptive digital innovation. These include an inherent focus on social value, alignment to financiers' interests and rivals' actions and strategic collaborations to create a synergy effect.
Research limitations/implications
Innovators can cause effective digital disruption by focusing on social and financial values. Success can also largely depend on strategic partnerships rather than actions by an individual entity. Thus, venturing and managing disruptive digital innovation is not an isolated but a social process.
Originality/value
This paper recommends propositions for innovators and incumbents to venture into and confront disruptive digital innovations effectively. Its originality lies in focusing on both successful and failure cases, unexplored in literature, to develop the propositions.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
While there is no specific fund supporting the project, a very early version of the article was presented in the ANZAM 2017 conference and the author would like to acknowledge the respective conference presentation support provided by the CQUniversity’s School of Business & Law. The author further acknowledges the anonymous reviewers for their insightful suggestion. All views expressed in this article are due to the author only and are not to be attributed to any other entity. No harm is intended to any named entities, and all expressed views are based on secondary information and scholarly analysis, as detailed in the article.
Citation
Imam, T. (2023), "Venturing and managing disruptive digital innovations: financial management concept motivated propositions", International Journal of Innovation Science, Vol. 15 No. 5, pp. 733-755. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJIS-01-2021-0002
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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