How do organizations adopt to discontinuous strategic and technological innovations, particularly in the context of digitalization?

Again and again, established organizations have great difficulty in adapting internal systems, processes and structures to discontinuous change. The problems of publishers, educational institutions and commercial enterprises to adapt to online-based media and platform-based e-commerce exemplify this problem. At the same time, these adaptation difficulties offer great opportunities for new players to push forward the discontinuous innovation process. Therefore, discontinuous innovations are often leading to fundamental socio-economic upheavals and have a significant impact on large sections of society.

Our Chair approaches this subject - one of the central questions of management research - from different theoretical perspectives. One current investigation, for instance, examines the subject of discontinuous change from an economic and commercial law perspective and analyzes how aspects of antitrust law and corporate governance (compliance) affect established businesses in adapting to technological discontinuities - and what significance this has for established companies, start-ups and legislators. In another study, we explore the perception of investments in discontinuous changes in the broader public, observing first signs for a preference of the public audience for discontinuous investments because they are more surprising and new as compared to more incremental steps. All in all, with our research in this area, we try to develop recommendations for established companies on how to respond to discontinuous change, but also for entrepreneurial start-ups, which might benefit from the myopia and inertia of incumbent organizations.