Disruptive innovation discourse: are academic research and news media on the same page?

ABSTRACT

The research aims to explore and compare the framing of the disruptive innovation phenomenon by the business media and the academic literature. For this purpose, 1160 news articles available on the Factiva database and 228 academic papers published in the Web of Science in the last 20 years were content analysed through an automated text-mining method. The results revealed that the representation of the disruptive innovation phenomenon in the news media diverges with the academic discourse despite the common vocabulary. While researchers describe disruptive innovation as a process/business model involving an improved performance, the media has not yet evolved from the technology-based perspective. Also, the media tends to focus on the features of the disruptive products and services but fails to discuss their value to the market. The framing of the social side of disruptive innovation also differs. The study offers three contributions: (i) it reveals the main concepts representing the term ‘disruptive innovation’ in the media and scholar discourse, (ii) it suggests future academic research avenues based on media interest and (iii) it emphasises media coverage gaps stemming from its failure to communicate the advances in the academic research on disruptive innovation.

KEYWORDS:

• Disruptive innovation
• media discourse
• framing
• publication analysis
• text-mining

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research has been supported by ESIC Business & Marketing School through the research project N° 1-V-2021 by the SEDDeS research group (Society, Digital Economy, and Sustainable Development).

Notes on contributors

Daniela Buzova

Daniela Buzova, PhD, is Lecturer in Marketing at the University of Valencia. She holds a PhD in Marketing from the University of Valencia (Spain). Her research interests include consumer behaviour, social media and more recently, disruptive innovation. Her research has been published in Technological Forecasting & Social Change, Online Information Review, Electronic Commerce Research and Applications and Service Industries Journal, among others.

Silvia Sanz-Blas

Silvia Sanz-Blas, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Marketing in the Faculty of Economics at the University of Valencia (Spain). She received her Ph.D. in Business and Economics from the University of Valencia. Her primary research areas include e-commerce, mobile commerce and social media. Her research has been published in Industrial Management and Data Systems, Business Research Quarterly, Online Information Review, and Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, among others.

Cristina Santos-Rojo

Cristina Santos-Rojo, PhD, is lecturer in ESIC University. She holds a PhD in Law from the University of Valencia. At a professional level, she has taught at the Faculty of Law of Valencia, the European University and ESIC. In the field of research, she has focused her latest work on teaching innovation and labour law. Her research has been published in the Journal of Business Research and Spanish law journals.