Is a Disruptive Technology Disruptive? The Readiness Perspective Based on TOE

Abstract

Most enterprises want to increase their competitiveness through the implementation of disruptive technology, but not all enterprises have achieved their initial expectations after adopting disruptive technologies. One of the most important reasons is that the enterprise itself is not well prepared for a disruptive technology in all aspects, which leads to many problems and risks in the implementation process. As the successful implementation of disruptive technology depends on enterprises’ innovativeness. The extant research focuses on its predictive identification, technical characteristics, and application directions. However, there is a lack of research on organizational preparation for implementing disruptive technologies to promote their success. Based on the technology-organization-environment (TOE) framework, this study reviews the literature to explore the readiness of enterprises adopting and implementing disruptive technologies. It extracts the factors that affect technological readiness, organizational readiness and environmental readiness respectively. Affecting an organization’s choice of adopting disruptive technologies, these three aspects of readiness ultimately determine their success.