This study proposes the concept of disruptive firms: they are firms with market leadership that deliberate introduce new and improved generations of durable goods that destroy, directly or indirectly, similar products present in markets in order to support their competitive advantage and/or market leadership. These disruptive firms support technological and industrial change and induce consumers to buy new products to adapt to new socioeconomic environment. In particular, disruptive firms generate and spread path-breaking innovations in order to achieve and sustain the goal of a (temporary) profit monopoly. This organizational behaviour and strategy of disruptive firms support technological change. This study can be useful for bringing a new perspective to explain and generalize one of the determinants that generates technological and industrial change. Overall, then this study suggests that one of the general sources of technological change is due to disruptive firms (subjects), rather than disruptive technologies (objects), that generate market shifts in a Schumpeterian world of innovation-based competition.
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This study proposes the concept of disruptive firms: they are firms with market leadership that deliberate introduce new and improved generations of durable goods that destroy, directly or indirectly, similar products present in markets in order to support their competitive advantage and/or market leadership. These disruptive firms support technological and industrial change and induce consumers to buy new products to adapt to new socioeconomic environment. In particular, disruptive firms generate and spread path-breaking innovations in order to achieve and sustain the goal of a (temporary) profit monopoly. This organizational behaviour and strategy of disruptive firms support technological change. This study can be useful for bringing a new perspective to explain and generalize one of the determinants that generates technological and industrial change. Overall, then this study suggests that one of the general sources of technological change is due to disruptive firms (subjects), rathe
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CocciaLAB Working Paper 2017 – No. 24
DISRUPTIVE FIRMS
Mario COCCIA .
ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY
CocciaLAB is at the Center for Social Dynamics and Complexity
Interdisciplinary Science and Technology Building 1 (ISBT1)
550 E. Orange Street, Tempe- AZ 85287-4804 USA
and
CNR – NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL OF ITALY
Via Real Collegio, 30-10024, Moncalieri (TO), Italy
E-mail: mario.coccia@cnr.it
A B
To discover the causes of social, economic and technological change COCCIALAB
Interdisciplinary Science and Technology Building 1 (ISBT1) Center for Social Dynamics and Complexity
ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY
550 E. Orange Street, Tempe- AZ 85287-4804 USA
CocciaLAB Working Paper 2017 – No. 24
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Coccia M. (2017) DISRUPTIVE FIRMS DISRUPTIVE FIRMS
This study proposes the concept of disruptive firms: they are firms with market leadership that deliberate
introduce new and improved generations of durable goods that destroy, directly or indirectly, similar products
present in markets in order to support their competitive advantage and/or market leadership. These disruptive
firms support technological and industrial change and induce consumers to buy new products to adapt to new
socioeconomic environment. In particular, disruptive firms generate and spread path-breaking innovations in
order to achieve and sustain the goal of a (temporary) profit monopoly. This organizational behaviour and
strategy of disruptive firms support technological change. This study can be useful for bringing a new
perspective to explain and generalize one of the determinants that generates technological and industrial change.
Overall, then this study suggests that one of the general sources of technological change is due to disruptive
firms (subjects), rather than disruptive technologies (objects), that generate market shifts in a Schumpeterian
world of innovation-based competition.
Coccia, M. (2017). Disruptive Firms. Working Paper CocciaLab n. 24, Arizona State University (USA).
1
I gratefully acknowledge financial support from the CNR - National Research Council of Italy for my visiting at Arizona State
University (Grant CNR - NEH Memorandum Grant n. 0072373-2014 and n. 0003005-2016) where this research started in 2016.
The author declares that he has no relevant or material financial interests that relate to the research discussed in this paper.
CocciaLAB Working Paper 2017 – No. 24
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Coccia M. (2017) DISRUPTIVE FIRMS Introduction Current economies show the advent of many technological advances in information technology, biotechnology,
nanotechnology, etc. that generate corporate, industrial and economic change (Arora et al., 2001; Henderson
and Clark, 1990; Nicholson et al., 1990; Teece et al., 1997; Van de Ven at al., 2008; von Hippel, 1988). The
literature in these research fields has suggested several approaches to explain the technological and industrial
change, such as the theory by Christensen (1997, 2006) that introduces the concept of disruptive technologies of
new entrants that disrupt the competitive advantage of incumbents in the presence market dynamisms. This
theory explains the industrial change with the interplay between incumbent and entrant firms that can generate
path-breaking technologies2. While the validity of certain of these studies may be debated, it is clear that there
are at least some facts about industrial change that theory of disruptive technologies has trouble explaining. As a
matter of fact, current dynamics of industries shows that new entrants can generate disruptive technologies but
their development and diffusion between markets have more and more economic barriers (Coccia, 2016; 2017). This paper suggests that industrial change is driven by specific subjects -disruptive firms, rather than disruptive
technologies per se. This study can be useful for bringing a new perspective to explain and generalize one of the
sources of technological change that is represented by specific firms that have the potential to generate and/or to
develop radical innovations that disrupt current products in markets and support industrial, economic and social
change.
In order to position this study in existing approaches, the paper develops the theoretical framework in next
section.
2 Cf., Ansari et al., 2016; Baatartogtokh, 2015; C
