Understanding Discontinuous Technology and Radical Innovation

Abstract

There is a great variety of terms used to describe the phenomenon of technological discontinuity and radical innovation (Green et al., 1995: 203; Garcia and Roger, 2002: 110). Both terms are often used synonymously without any differentiation (Lehmann, 1994: 10). Besides the term radical innovation (North and Tucker, 1987: 11; Damanpour, 1988: 546; Leifer, 2000: 4; O’Connor and Veryzer, 2001: 233), and breakthrough innovation (Nayak and Ketteringham, 1986: 181; Mascitelli, 2000), authors speak of breakpoint (Strebel, 1995: 11) or revolutionary innovation (Abernathy and Clark, 1991: 61). Since a few years Christensen (1997; 2003) introduced the term disruptive technology in the context related to radical innovation changes. The present article will focus on the most popular terms used in literature – which are discontinuous technology, radical innovation, and disruptive technology – in order to differentiate them and to show how they are related. Doing so, it will also shed light on how the research community commonly understands the phenomenon described by these terms.