Title: When disruptors converge: the last automobile revolution

Authors: Alex Covarrubias V

Addresses: College of Sonora, Av. Obregon 54, CP 83000, Hermosillo, Son, Mexico

Abstract: While the automobile industry is in a transition prompted by cutting-edge technologies that enable old and new players to envision more efficient ways of mobilising people and goods, a debate boils up as to the depth and breadth of such transition. This paper joins the debate from an analytical approach based on the dialectic issue life cycle (DILC) model, the theory of disruptive innovations and organisational concepts of neo-institutional scholars. It identifies that automakers are well involved into a phase of strategic diversification spurred by a unique historical convergence of alternative drive systems, digital technologies, new business models and newcomers. While changes take place at the level of sustaining innovations and industrial mindset is the dimension more radically changed, automakers are struggling in the search for an anew business-balancing act of value propositions, alliances, and organisational structures.

Keywords: industry transition; sustainable innovation; disruptive innovation; technological trajectory; industry mindset; business model; value proposition; value architecture; organisational structures; dialectic lifecycle.

DOI: 10.1504/IJATM.2018.092184

International Journal of Automotive Technology and Management, 2018 Vol.18 No.2, pp.81 - 104

Received: 23 Aug 2017
Accepted: 21 Dec 2017
Published online: 08 Jun 2018 *

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