Title: Disruptive innovation through a dynamic capabilities lens: an exploration of the auto component sector in India

Authors: Deepak Pandit; Maheshkumar P. Joshi; Rajen K. Gupta; Arun Sahay

Addresses: Indian School of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development (iSEED), Gurgaon, India; Management Development Institute, Gurgaon, India ' Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, School of Business, George Mason University, Fairfax VA 22030, USA ' Management Development Institute, Mehrauli Road, Sukhrali, Gurgaon, Haryana, 122007, India ' Birla Institute of Management Technology, Plot No. 5, Knowledge Park II, Greater Noida (NCR), Uttar Pradesh, 201 306, India

Abstract: Innovation has gained momentum for the development; spread; and survival of auto industrial firms in India. In this paper; we study the less-explored aspect of organisational response focusing on discontinuous innovation. The Indian auto sector requires a tool for long-term market dominance; particularly owing to the rapid change in the business environment. This can be achieved through a special kind of discontinuous innovation known as disruptive innovation (DI). We further affirm how developing DI is facilitated by the firm's dynamic capability (DC); to substantiate our claims; we develop and utilise a survey instrument to test a hypothesised model with responses from various firms affiliated with the Indian auto component industry. Our findings confirm the positive roles of DC and research and development (R&D) expenditure as antecedents to DI. We further conduct exploratory analysis to study factors such as R&D and environmental turbulence as moderators of the DC-DI relationship. We offer the following contributions: the operationalisation of DC and DI for the Indian context, a sector specific study and critical results pertaining to moderating role of R&D and environmental turbulence on the positive DC-DI relationship.

Keywords: dynamic capability; disruptive innovation; automotive components; emerging economies; India; economic liberalisation; automobile industry; research and development; R&D expenditure; environmental turbulence.

DOI: 10.1504/IJICBM.2017.080763

International Journal of Indian Culture and Business Management, 2017 Vol.14 No.1, pp.109 - 130

Received: 21 Oct 2015
Accepted: 23 Jan 2016
Published online: 06 Dec 2016 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article