Abstract
Digital disruption is the phenomenon when established businesses succumb to new business models that exploit emerging technologies. Futurists often make dire predictions when discussing the impact of digital disruption, for instance that 40% of the Fortune 500 companies will disappear within the next decade. The digital disruption phenomenon was already studied two decades ago when Clayton Christensen developed a Theory of Disruptive Innovation, which is a popular theory for describing and explaining disruption due to technology developments that had occurred in the past. However it is still problematic to understand what is necessary to avoid disruption, especially within the context of a sustainable society in the 21st century. A key aspect we identified is the behavior of non-mainstream customers of an emerging technology, which is difficult to predict, especially when an organization is operating in an existing solution space. In this position paper we propose complementing the Theory of Disruptive Innovation with design thinking in order to identify the performance attributes that encourage the unpredictable and unforeseen customer behavior that is a cause for disruption. We employ case-based scenario analysis of higher education as evaluation mechanism for our extended disruptive innovation theory. Our position is that a better understanding of the implicit and unpredictable customer behavior that cause disruption due to additional performance attributes (using design thinking) could assist organizations to pre-empt digital disruption and adapt to support the additional functionality.
Highlights
Digital disruption was coined in the early 1980 to describe the phenomenon of failed companies such as Kodak that unexpectedly failed due to digitization and emerging technologies
In this paper we report on initial work that use design thinking with the Theory of Disruptive Innovation in order to work towards an extended TDI
Several discussions on whether MOOCs are potential disruptors for HEI abounds [32–35], and for this study we take the position that MOOCs provide additional functionality such as on-demand specific training when required by the changing nature of the workplace, as well as accessibility, customizability and affordability in contrast with classical HEI structures [34]
Summary
Digital disruption was coined in the early 1980 to describe the phenomenon of failed companies such as Kodak that unexpectedly failed due to digitization and emerging technologies. The irony of this specific case is that Kodak developed the first digital camera that digitized photography but failed to capitalize on the technology that lead to their eventual closing down [1]. Smith-Corona failed to capitalize on the developments in word processing and viewed the personal computer market as a rival technology that they could counter with continued improvements in typewriter technology This strategy lead to their demise about 20 years later when they were bought over by a private company during their second bankruptcy and ceased manufacturing of all typewriters [2]
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