How entrepreneurial business model design influences disruptive and adoptive product innovation

Abstract

The blockchain technology has the great potential to drive product innovation in various industries. This makes such an emerging technology play as an important enabler that drives the generation of new venture. Our study examines the effects of business model designs of blockchain-based entrepreneurial firms on the scope of product newness: disruptive innovation and adoptive innovation. To test such a relationship, we conduct a survey to collect data from 159 blockchain-based ventures. The findings indicate that the novel business model strongly entices disruptive innovation, but it does not influence blockchain-based adoptive product innovation. The results also indicate that the efficient business model strongly encourages blockchain-based product adoptive innovation, but it strongly discourages blockchain-based disruptive product innovation. Further, our analysis shows that the firm’s disruptive technological capability strengthens the positive relationship between the novel business model and disruptive product innovation, but it weakens the positive relationship among the design efficiency and adoptive innovation. Additionally, we found that the disruptive technological capability strongly entices blockchain-based entrepreneurial firms to favor disruptive product innovation over adoptive product innovation.