Cultivating Opportunities for Disruptive Innovations

Abstract

Despite the increasing significance of disruptive innovations for entrepreneurial firms, our understanding of how entrepreneurial opportunities for such innovations are created and/or discovered remains limited. Through an in-depth case study of IDIS, a digital security venture company that designs, develops, and manufactures digital surveillance products for high- and low-end sector markets, this study shows how entrepreneurs purposively cultivate opportunities for disruptive innovations. The findings provide three key insights: first, entrepreneurial opportunities embedded in disruptive innovations are deliberately created and detected; second, disruptive innovation is the process where continuous entrepreneurial actions and efforts are crucial for innovation enhancement and commercialization; and third, entrepreneurial strategies and actions related to opportunity creation are more prevalent in emerging markets, while those related to opportunity discovery are more common in low-end markets, although both types of strategies and actions apply to all cases. By integrating the literature on entrepreneurial opportunities with the disruptive innovation scholarship, this study newly sheds light on the extent to which the disruptive innovation theory can facilitate predictions.

Keywords: Entrepreneurial opportunities, opportunity creation, opportunity discovery, disruptive innovation, case study, IDIS