Insights into the monitoring of disruptive technologies: Evidence from a study of global industry leaders from Germany

The theory of disruptive technologies, mainly influenced by Clayton M. Christensen combined with a rising technological complexity and diversity in almost all industry sectors, is challenging companies in their decision making on technological investments. Methods, structures and processes seem to be widely applied to support decisions on technologies and technological developments in general. But what are the practices from technology oriented industry leaders to respond to the special challenges of disruptive technologies? To obtain insights into the monitoring of disruptive technologies in practice, a semi-structured, qualitative study among global industry leaders from Germany has been carried out. All companies selected for the sample are technology oriented global leaders in their business field. To focus the sample on companies with a high innovation potential, all selected companies have been rewarded with an innovation award at least once within the last five years. For being able to compare the monitoring of technologies in general with the practices applied for the monitoring of disruptive technologies, the study was classified into different topic areas including an extended technology monitoring process, the support through information technologies, the monitoring of disruptive technologies and good or best practices to be recommended for further application in other companies.