Managing Discontinuous Innovation

Management approaches to innovation are notably different between those for incremental changes and those for disruptive ones. Disruptive innovation is deemed to be risky, uncertain, and costly by academics and practitioners. Meanwhile, incremental innovation is characterized as more predictable and corresponding with organizational context. Accordingly, the discontinuous innovation is supposed to be conflicting with and threatening for the organizational structure, current achievements, and ongoing procedures. However, it is the discontinuous change that a firm really needs in order to gain competitive advantage in the turbulent business environment. Most companies prefer to concentrate on incremental innovations, thereby being less effective in managing discontinuous innovations. Organizational inertia, structured routines, and less absorptive capacity are three among other hindrances to the discontinuous innovation. Hence, a company has to design and implement different approaches, including strategic actions, industry context, organizational context, technological context, and people context. In conclusion, the company has to promote discontinuous innovations in this changing environment while maintaining the survival ability by managing incremental innovations. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]