Disruptive innovation, managerial cognition, and technology competition outcomes

Riccardo Vecchiato

Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2017, vol. 116, issue C, 116-128

Abstract: In this paper we explore why incumbent firms fail to identify new markets in the face of disruptive technologies. We cross research on disruptive innovation with research on managerial cognition and we focus on the role of managerial beliefs about customer needs in directing the search for new markets and product features. We show that a primary reason why incumbents lose their leadership is the inability to recognize either the rising ‘social’ market, where customers use products for fulfilling their need for friendship, or the ‘esteem’ market, where customers use products for fulfilling their need for achievement. We then apply our emerging conceptual framework to the case of the smartphone industry and the ongoing rivalry among operating systems. We thus try to advance the disruptive innovation theory with regard to both the explanation and the anticipation of technology competition outcomes.

Keywords: Disruptive innovation; Cognition; Social market; Esteem market; Mobile communication business; Established firm failure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004016251630587X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:tefoso:v:116:y:2017:i:c:p:116-128

DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2016.10.068

Access Statistics for this article

Technological Forecasting and Social Change is currently edited by Fred Phillips

More articles in Technological Forecasting and Social Change from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().