The group discussed about disruptive innovation, disruptive technologies, and how entrepreneurs could manage to steer their business along a disruptive path. Neele Petzold presented some of her recent findings from a paper entitled "Disruptive Innovation from a Process View. A Systematic Literature Review" (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/caim.12313) showing how the disruptive path is a complex managerial undertaking, manoeuvring perception and interplay of other market actors, whilst being sensitive to underlying processes and the importance of being timely (i.e. synchronizing certain underlying processes to move ahead). Further, her research showed how extant literature describes a disruptive technology as being integrated within a business model to achieve the disruptive characteristics of being easier to use, more convenient, and generally cheaper, underperforming on mainstream market attributes. The research contributed to the BMBF project MaDiC.
After the presentation, the discussion arose as to whether managing along the disruptive path requires a vision to "become a disruptor" or whether start-ups could end up disrupting the industry "by chance". Preliminary findings suggest that the disruptive path requires strategic considerations and due to asynchronies and pressure from incumbents and other market actors disrupting "by chance" appears difficult. However, from the interviews conducted as part of the MaDiC project, few start-ups actively frame themselves as disruptors, but may follow a vision of "seriously questioning the status-quo".