A critical look at breakthrough innovation: Literature Review and Proposed Framework

Abstract

A surfeit of definitions for innovation types has resulted in the equivocal way breakthrough innovation is defined and used in the academic literature. The term breakthrough is often synonymously used with radical, disruptive, discontinuous, or stated to be results of radical innovations built to destroy past competencies. Such misperception may lead to several problems. First, it confuses breakthrough with competence destroying innovations, radical innovations, and product innovations. Second, if a breakthrough is equated with radical or competence destroying innovations, or new product launch, we assume that firms risk disbanding their existing technologies. Such activities without a clear path have shortcomings such as integration costs and information overload, leading to inconclusive results and the high complication of combining dissimilar innovation. Last, without proper definitions, we cannot have explicit cut assumptions and boundary conditions. This will cripple future research. To resolve this, I am proposing creating a nomenclature of innovations by breaking them into three categories: Innovation Configuration, which will comprise of architecture versus component innovations, and radical versus incremental; Innovation Application, which will look at product versus process innovations, and competence enhancing versus competence destroying innovations; and lastly Innovation Performance that looks if the innovation created a breakthrough in its performance. This model will reduce confusion between breakthrough, disruptive, and radical innovations and help future research understand breakthroughs from performance standpoints.