Digital transformation & Innovation - Summary of papers
Master information management - 2022/2023
Preparation for essay
Jaar Schrijver Titel
1995 Bower, J. L., & Disruptive technologies: catching the wave.
Christensen, C. M.
2006 Tidd, J. A review of innovation models ( gives an overview of several innovation types and
asks special attention for the diffusion process)
2006 Ettlie History of innovation research
2007 Orlikowski Sociomaterial Practices: Exploring Technology at Work
2010 Yoo et al The New Organizing Logic of Digital Innovation:
An Agenda for Information Systems Research
2012 Yoo et al Organizing for Innovation in the Digitized World
2017 Nambisan et al Digital Innovation Management: Reinventing innovation management research in a
digital world.
2018 Kohli & Melville Digital innovation: A review and synthesis
2018 Hinning et al Digital innovation and transformation: An institutional perspective
Disruptive technologies : catching the wave (Bower, 1995)
Research of Bower (1995) states that leading companies stay too close to their customers and therefore miss
out on disruptive technologies. The research shows that most well-managed, established companies are
constantly ahead of their industries in developing and commercializing new technologies - from incremental
improvements to radically new approaches.
Bower (1995): Disruptive technologies introduce a very different package of attributes from the one mainstream
customer historically value, and they often perform far worse along one or two dimensions that are particularly
Important to those customers. Generally, they can look unattractive to established companies (going downmarket).
Sustaining technologies tend to maintain a rate of improvement. They give customers something more or better
in the attributes they already value.
Method for spotting and cultivating disruptive technologies:
● Determine whether the technology is disruptive or sustaining: Examine internal disagreements
over the development of new products or technologies. Look who supports it and who doesn’t.
Disagreement between marketing and financial staff often signals a disruptive technology.
● Define the strategic significance of the disruptive technology: The next step is to ask the right
people the right questions about the strategic importance of the technology. A graph plotting
product performance as it is defined in mainstream markets on the vertical axis and time on the
horizontal axis can help managers identify both the right questions and right people to ask.
● Locate the initial market for the disruptive technology: Managers must create information about
such market, who the customer will be, which dimensions of product performance will matter
, most to which customers, what the right price points will be. This can only be established by
experimenting rapidly.
● Place responsibility for building a disruptive technology business in an independent organization:
Use a strategy of forming small teams into skunk-works projects to isolate them form the stifling
demands of mainstreams organizations. Sometimes it is necessary to create a separate
organization.
● Keep the disruptive organization
independent.
Example of the hard-disk drive industry shows the
danger of staying too close to the customers. The
industry in constantly toppled by newp comers who
did not meet the needs of the mainstream
customers. There was a distinction between
the capacity provided and the capacity demanded
by the users.
Disadvantages are going downmarket which
means accepting lower profit margins. On the
other hand they could go upmarket with sustaining
technologies. But this could lead to lower
profitability when this market reduces and is taken
over by the new emerging market.
Review of innovation models (Tidd, 2006)
Tidd, Bessant and Pavitt (2005) defined several triggers for discontinuity within markets. These
discontinuities change the common rules of the game and new opportunities for innovation arise.
Examples of these triggers are new technologies, new political rules, market exhaustion, business model
innovation.
The importance of an understanding of innovation as a process is that it shapes the way in which we try
and manage it (Tidd, 2006). One of the key problems in managing innovation is to make sense of a
complex, uncertain and highly risky set of phenomena.
(Tidd, 2006) introduces ‘fluid phase’ during which there is high uncertainty along: The target (what will the
configuration be) and the technical (how will we harness the technological knowledge to create and
deliver).
Tidd (2006) states, regarding management, that good practice of the steady state is helpful in the mature
phase but it can actively militate against entry and success in exploiting the fluid phase of a new
technology. There can be suggested that there is something about the ways in which innovation is
managed under these conditions, which poses problems.
Christensen (1997) drew attention to cases where the market was the effective trigger point of innovation.
He looked into cases of successful companies who worked very close with their lead users. They
understood their needs and developed products alongside them. The problem here is that they listened
Master information management - 2022/2023
Preparation for essay
Jaar Schrijver Titel
1995 Bower, J. L., & Disruptive technologies: catching the wave.
Christensen, C. M.
2006 Tidd, J. A review of innovation models ( gives an overview of several innovation types and
asks special attention for the diffusion process)
2006 Ettlie History of innovation research
2007 Orlikowski Sociomaterial Practices: Exploring Technology at Work
2010 Yoo et al The New Organizing Logic of Digital Innovation:
An Agenda for Information Systems Research
2012 Yoo et al Organizing for Innovation in the Digitized World
2017 Nambisan et al Digital Innovation Management: Reinventing innovation management research in a
digital world.
2018 Kohli & Melville Digital innovation: A review and synthesis
2018 Hinning et al Digital innovation and transformation: An institutional perspective
Disruptive technologies : catching the wave (Bower, 1995)
Research of Bower (1995) states that leading companies stay too close to their customers and therefore miss
out on disruptive technologies. The research shows that most well-managed, established companies are
constantly ahead of their industries in developing and commercializing new technologies - from incremental
improvements to radically new approaches.
Bower (1995): Disruptive technologies introduce a very different package of attributes from the one mainstream
customer historically value, and they often perform far worse along one or two dimensions that are particularly
Important to those customers. Generally, they can look unattractive to established companies (going downmarket).
Sustaining technologies tend to maintain a rate of improvement. They give customers something more or better
in the attributes they already value.
Method for spotting and cultivating disruptive technologies:
● Determine whether the technology is disruptive or sustaining: Examine internal disagreements
over the development of new products or technologies. Look who supports it and who doesn’t.
Disagreement between marketing and financial staff often signals a disruptive technology.
● Define the strategic significance of the disruptive technology: The next step is to ask the right
people the right questions about the strategic importance of the technology. A graph plotting
product performance as it is defined in mainstream markets on the vertical axis and time on the
horizontal axis can help managers identify both the right questions and right people to ask.
● Locate the initial market for the disruptive technology: Managers must create information about
such market, who the customer will be, which dimensions of product performance will matter
, most to which customers, what the right price points will be. This can only be established by
experimenting rapidly.
● Place responsibility for building a disruptive technology business in an independent organization:
Use a strategy of forming small teams into skunk-works projects to isolate them form the stifling
demands of mainstreams organizations. Sometimes it is necessary to create a separate
organization.
● Keep the disruptive organization
independent.
Example of the hard-disk drive industry shows the
danger of staying too close to the customers. The
industry in constantly toppled by newp comers who
did not meet the needs of the mainstream
customers. There was a distinction between
the capacity provided and the capacity demanded
by the users.
Disadvantages are going downmarket which
means accepting lower profit margins. On the
other hand they could go upmarket with sustaining
technologies. But this could lead to lower
profitability when this market reduces and is taken
over by the new emerging market.
Review of innovation models (Tidd, 2006)
Tidd, Bessant and Pavitt (2005) defined several triggers for discontinuity within markets. These
discontinuities change the common rules of the game and new opportunities for innovation arise.
Examples of these triggers are new technologies, new political rules, market exhaustion, business model
innovation.
The importance of an understanding of innovation as a process is that it shapes the way in which we try
and manage it (Tidd, 2006). One of the key problems in managing innovation is to make sense of a
complex, uncertain and highly risky set of phenomena.
(Tidd, 2006) introduces ‘fluid phase’ during which there is high uncertainty along: The target (what will the
configuration be) and the technical (how will we harness the technological knowledge to create and
deliver).
Tidd (2006) states, regarding management, that good practice of the steady state is helpful in the mature
phase but it can actively militate against entry and success in exploiting the fluid phase of a new
technology. There can be suggested that there is something about the ways in which innovation is
managed under these conditions, which poses problems.
Christensen (1997) drew attention to cases where the market was the effective trigger point of innovation.
He looked into cases of successful companies who worked very close with their lead users. They
understood their needs and developed products alongside them. The problem here is that they listened
