Response Strategies of Incumbent Firms to Disruptive Innovation- a Perspective from Non-innovation Related Research Fields

Research on the phenomenon of innovation shows that companies with initially leading positions in the industry often fail when the competitive situation changes and entrants come to the market with disruptive innovations. This raises the important question of what incumbents should do in order to optimally encounter such a situation. Should an incumbent respond at all? Which type of response should it pursue? How could the preferred response be implemented most effectively in terms of structure and management? To answer these questions the author Olga Piskunova analyses the existing recommendations to incumbent firms faced with the disruptive innovation along the response strategy framework consisting of following steps: decision to respond, response formulation and choice, response implementation. She shows further how non-innovation related research streams, such as game theory, contagion theory, marketing, and diversi­fication research, could contribute to the disputable issues in the framework and fill some gaps. This book could be valuable for practitioners, as well as for scholars, researching the theoretical aspects of the phenomena of compe­tition and innovation.