Disruptive innovation in Small and Medium Enterprises: a key factors checklist

Abstract

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) operate in an environment where their existence are impacted by information technology – an attribute of Society 5.0, adoption of technologies and resource scarcity. As a key contributor to countries’ economy, SMEs need to innovate, create social businesses, and develop new business models to stand the test of time. Hence, SMEs must focus on key aspects that will empower them to leapfrog the traditional pathways of development and innovate. The purpose of this study is to present SMEs with a disruptive innovation key factor checklist based on an investigation of key disruptive innovation factors from the literature. The disruptive innovation key factor checklist was developed by analyzing a corpus of 137 papers through an automated content analysis process. Ten themes and 38 concepts were identified that informed the categorization to the Technology-Organization-Environment framework and the creation of the disruptive innovation key factor checklist. To create an instantiation of the checklist, we mapped the key factors checklist to an SME case study. By considering the checklist, SMEs are guided to optimize their innovation strategy, stakeholder engagement, technology adoption and innovation impact.