Informal groups, disruptive innovations, and industry change in low‐tech peripheries

Abstract

AbstractPeople often engage in informal activities or personal endeavours that lead to both deliberate and serendipitous disruptive innovation and industry change. Some such innovation and change is found in geographic or other peripheries without corporate research and development budgets or successful track records in inventive activities. Yet little research exists to explain how those peripheral and informal groups and their pursuits contribute to industry development and transformation. This article addresses that gap. Drawing on thematic analyses of 30 interviews with hobbyist and commercial beekeepers in Western Australia, the article examines the beekeeping industry and considers how hobbyists function as industry external knowledge sources and user innovators. Findings suggest that hobbyist–firm interactions are platforms for value creation and appropriation for both groups and their respective local communities, in addition to being based on both competition and collaboration in parallel markets of exchange. In particular, hobbyist innovators are important for low‐tech industry advancement and provide crucial scientific, practical, and local geographic knowledge that changes industry approaches and activities. These findings are likely to be significant to other low‐tech industries with informal local groups acting as sources of knowledge and information for disruptive innovations or industry transformation.