Enabling Potential Disruptive Innovation by Customer-Orientated Processes: The Case of Chinese Firms

The growing recognition of disruptive innovation as an important phenomenon in competitive strategy has led researchers to examine the question of how to promote disruptive innovation. The extant literature has studied on the organisational preconditions for disruptive innovation to arise, including resource allocation processes, organisational structure, organisational culture, and R&D and production processes. Much less attention has been paid to the role of customer-oriented processes in enabling disruptive innovation. In this research we develop propositions about how customer-oriented processes can foster disruptive innovation by using a set of case studies of Chinese firms. These findings have important implications for firms wishing to fuel disruptive innovations.