Exploring the relationship between incumbency and radical innovation: the case of business to consumer e-commerce applications
by Davide Chiaroni, Vittorio Chiesa, Federico Frattini, Luca Turba
International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management (IJEIM), Vol. 11, No. 4, 2010

Abstract: The purpose of the paper is to investigate the factors underlying the difficulty that incumbent firms encounter, in comparison with new entrants, in the development and exploitation of a radical innovation, a phenomenon also known as 'incumbent's curse'. The paper shows that incumbent's curse is determined by different factors (organisational, strategic and economic), depending on the dimensions of radicalness that characterise the innovation. Moreover, it reports the results of an exploratory study on the adoption of B2C e-commerce by Italian firms, designed to investigate if and how the factors underlying incumbent's curse have different impacts along the cycle of adoption of the innovation. The analysis suggests that the performance of incumbents in the first months that follow adoption is significantly influenced by their organisational characteristics. If these are not adequate to the innovation being adopted, incumbents are likely to be outperformed by new entrants and this initial drawback is difficult to recover as time passes.

Online publication date: Fri, 19-Mar-2010

The full text of this article is only available to individual subscribers or to users at subscribing institutions.

 
Existing subscribers:
Go to Inderscience Online Journals to access the Full Text of this article.

Pay per view:
If you are not a subscriber and you just want to read the full contents of this article, buy online access here.

Complimentary Subscribers, Editors or Members of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management (IJEIM):
Login with your Inderscience username and password:

Username:        Password:          Forgotten your password?

Want to subscribe?
A subscription gives you complete access to all articles in the current issue, as well as to all articles in the previous three years (where applicable). See our Orders page to subscribe.

If you still need assistance, please email subs@inderscience.com