Does complementary technology within an ecosystem affect disruptive innovation? Evidence from Chinese electric vehicle listed firms

Complementary technologies are argued to be crucial elements for disruptive innovation. This is even truer in the consistent structure of ecosystems surrounding core disruptive innovations, where firms take interdependence as the premise to provide complementary technologies and create value jointly. Existing research at the disruptive innovation–ecosystem intersection spans a wide range of theoretical perspectives. However, it is still inconclusive about what types of complementary technology configurations might be most useful for the firms they collaborate with to create disruptive innovation. In an attempt to address these gaps, we consider diversity, quality, and novelty as distinguishing structural characteristics of complementary technologies. Empirical evidence from the Chinese electric vehicle listed firms from 2010 to 2019 reveals that the diversity, quality, and novelty of complementary technologies within ecosystems all contribute to subsequent disruptive innovation. Furthermore, we find an inverted U-shaped moderating effect of technological relatedness on the relationship between complementary technologies and disruptive innovation. At intermediate levels of technological relatedness, complementary technologies have greater benefits for disruptive innovation but are comparatively weaker when technological relatedness is low or high. Our findings crystallise a nuanced understanding of how firms orchestrate complementary activities within ecosystems in the disruptive innovation process, thus narrowing the gap with the technological frontier. •Disruptive innovation occurs within multisided ecosystems in which complementors provide various complementary technologies.•The diversity, quality, and novelty of complementary technologies all contribute to subsequent disruptive innovation.•The "inverted U-shaped" moderating effect of technological relatedness is verified.•This paper conveys new insights on disruptive innovation-based catching-up strategies for policymakers and practitioners.