Disruptive Innovation Explored

Abstract

Disruptive innovation is a term used to describe innovation that is of highly discontinuous or revolutionary nature, which is the opposite of evolutionary or incremental innovation. The term is becoming more widely recognised, but a consistent view of what disruptive innovation is or how it is defined is missing. This paper explores the different dimensions of disruptive innovation put forward by different authors and proposes a working definition as a key building block for an European Commission (EC) co-sponsored re- search project (DisruptIT). The working definition will be used to guide the development of the tools and methods that will help organisations enable and manage disruptive innovation as a key competitive strategy.