The Effect of Organizational Slack on Innovation Performance: An Empirical Study of High-Tech Industry in China

Disruptive Innovation

The concept of disruptive innovation goes back at least to the work by Schumpeter (1934) who emphasised in his book ‘The Theory of Economics Development’ that innovation strengthens organisations competitiveness through creating new demand in new market while destroying old market (Wu et. al 2010). Abernathy and Clark (1985) stress that new innovation may destroy the value of existing innovation. However, the theory of disruptive innovation has first been shaped by Bower and Christensen (1995) with the focus on technology and the theory of disruptive technology has been established by (Christensen, 1997) in his seminal book ‘The innovator’s Dilemma’. Overtime, Christensen widened the concept to include also products, services and business models and refers to the new concept as disruption innovation (Christensen, 2006; Christensen & Raynor, 2003; Markides, 2006). To support the new concept, Christensen and Raynor (2003) provide examples of disruption innovation, including discount department stores, mass-market products, online businesses such as bookselling and education. Markides (2006) agrees that these innovations are disruptive to incumbents, but treatment all as one and the same “has actually confused the matters considerably”.