Qualitative Research on Incumbents’ Responses to Discontinuous Technologies: Distilling an Integrative Framework of Context

Focal industries

Table 2 classifies the focal industries that served as empirical contexts in the sample according to the 2024 Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS). Most studies in our sample (103; 81%) focus on how incumbents from a single industry respond to a given technological discontinuity, while the remainder (24; 19%) adopt a multi-industry perspective (e.g., Benner, 2010; Danneels, 2002; König et al., 2021). The studies that focus on a single industry dedicate the most sustained scholarly attention to automobiles (e.g., Bohnsack, Pinkse, & Kolk, 2014; Reischauer, Engelmann, Gawer, & Hoffmann, 2024; Shu, 2022), communications equipment (e.g., Vecchiato, 2020; Vuori & Huy, 2016; Vuori & Tushman, 2024), and machinery (e.g., Bohnsack, Rennings, Block, & Bröring, 2024; Smith & Beretta, 2021; Van Dyck, Lüttgens, Diener, Piller, & Pollok, 2024).

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Table 2

Focal Industry as Empirical Context

Focal Industry	Number ofArticles	Percentage
Aerospace and defense	2	1.57
Automobiles	11	8.66
Banks	2	1.57
Biotechnology	1	0.79
Broadline retail	1	0.79
Capital markets	4	3.15
Chemicals	3	2.36
Communications equipment	9	7.09
Diversified telecommunication services	3	2.36
Electric utilities	2	1.57
Electronic equipment, instruments, and components	2	1.57
Energy equipment and services	1	0.79
Entertainment	5	3.94
Financial services	1	0.79
Food products	1	0.79
Hotels, restaurants, and leisure	2	1.57
Household durables	6	4.72
Independent power and renewable electricity producers	1	0.79
Industrial conglomerates	1	0.79
Insurance	1	0.79
Machinery	9	7.09
Media	7	5.51
Multi-industry (>1 industry studied)	24	18.9
Oil, gas, and consumable fuels	2	1.57
Pharmaceuticals	1	0.79
Professional services	4	3.15
Semiconductors and semiconductor equipment	1	0.79
Software	5	3.94
Specialty retail	1	0.79
Technology hardware, storage, and peripherals	5	3.94
Textiles, apparel, and luxury goods	2	1.57
Transportation infrastructure	1	0.79
Wireless telecommunication services	6	4.72

Note. We classified focal industries according to the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS) published on August 1, 2024.

The automobile industry constitutes the context in 11 articles (9%). Incumbents in this industry face several discontinuous technologies, such as electric powertrains, autonomous driving, and connected services, which offer compelling cases for studying incumbent heterogeneity. For instance, Shu (2022) studies how Toyota, as an automobile incumbent, navigated the paradoxical tensions in sustainable new-product development by pioneering the hybrid-vehicle technology with the Toyota Prius, while Pushpananthan and Elmquist (2022) examine how decision makers at Volvo orchestrated alliances with diverse stakeholders to co-create an innovation ecosystem centered on autonomous driving technologies.

The communications-equipment industry features in nine articles (7%). In this industry, incumbents’ established competitive advantages are challenged by rapid, high-stakes technological shifts such as from analog to digital and from 2G to 5G wireless technologies. A particularly prominent case in this context is Nokia (Vuori & Tushman, 2024). Vecchiato (2020), for example, investigates how Nokia relied on analogical reasoning from the personal-computer sector to navigate the emergence of 3G and convergent digital applications. Relatedly, Khanagha, Ramezan Zadeh, Mihalache, and Volberda (2018) explore Ericsson’s reconfiguration during the process of adopting emerging cloud-computing technologies.

The machinery industry appears in nine articles (7%). In this capital-intensive industry, innovations such as advanced robotics, automation, and digital transformation challenge established players. Dhir, Talwar, Islam, Alghafes, and Badghish (2023), for example, investigate how manufacturing firms in the United Kingdom navigated the adoption of 3D printing technologies to enhance agility, efficiency, and sustainability in their operations, while Van Dyck et al. (2024) examine how global agricultural equipment firms shifted from manufacturing standalone farm machinery to orchestrating data-driven platform ecosystems.

Data sources

Figure 3 shows the main data sources in qualitative research on incumbents’ responses to discontinuous technologies. They include interviews (e.g., structured, semistructured, and unstructured), which appear in 111 articles (87%), and archival data (e.g., reports, letters, emails, policies, and meeting minutes), which appear in 116 articles (91%). Interviews generally serve as a primary data source (e.g., Gilbert, 2005; Vuori & Huy, 2016), while archival data typically serve as a secondary source (e.g., Pemer & Werr, 2025; ³ Weber et al., 2019), mainly for data-triangulation purposes (Eisenhardt, 1989; Yin, 2009). Nevertheless, in 14 articles (11%), secondary data sources constitute the sole evidence base (e.g., Benner, 2010; Bohnsack, Kurtz, & Hanelt, 2021; Kahl & Grodal, 2016).

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Figure 3

Data Sources Used in the Sampled Articles

Additional primary data sources reported in the literature include observations (e.g., ethnographic, participant, and nonparticipant observations) in 40 articles (31%), surveys and questionnaires (e.g., qualitative surveys, open-ended essays) in 12 articles (9%), and focus groups (e.g., group discussions to gather collective insights) in 7 articles (6%). These data sources serve as supplemental means to capture organizational behaviors and collective views, thus enriching their interpretive depth. Additional secondary data sources evident in the literature include media (e.g., newspapers, TV broadcasts, blogs, social media) in 84 articles (66%) and visual and material (e.g., images, artworks, physical artifacts) in 12 articles (9%).

Analytical approaches and templates

We also considered how the studies in our sample characterize their analytical approaches and templates (Gioia et al., 2022; Köhler, Smith, & Bhakoo, 2022; Langley & Abdallah, 2015). Specifically, in an abductive fashion, we coded whether they invoke established qualitative research templates, such as Eisenhardt’s (1989) multiple-case approach, the “Gioia method” (Gioia et al., 2013), or Langley’s (1999) distinction between process- and variance-focused research (Gehman, Glaser, Eisenhardt, Gioia, Langley, & Corley, 2018; Langley & Abdallah, 2015). Some studies explicitly adopt a particular analytical template. For instance, Van Dyck et al. (2024) specifically position their paper as an Eisenhardt-style multiple-case study (Eisenhardt, 2021), and Vuori and Huy (2016) develop process theory (Langley, 1999). Yet, most studies either combine approaches, applying multiple analytical templates, or remain methodologically ambiguous (see Coding Table 1 in the online supplemental material). This fluidity reflects a broader characteristic of qualitative research—methodological flexibility and adaptation in response to emerging empirical insights. It also underscores the inherently dynamic, interpretive nature of qualitative research, which often defies strict categorization into canonical templates (Eisenhardt, Graebner, & Sonenshein, 2016; Graebner, 2021; Harley & Cornelissen, 2022).

In summary, qualitative research on discontinuous technologies is both extensive and growing, and the contexts examined and the methodological approaches vary widely. As such, our sample strongly supports the assumptions that motivate our literature review—while qualitative research on incumbent heterogeneity is substantial, it is significantly fragmented with respect to empirical contexts and approaches. This inherently makes it difficult to compare and generalize across studies. While scholars acknowledge such limitations (e.g., König et al., 2021), synthesizing the empirical contexts and the variety of discontinuous technologies appears highly warranted, leading us to present our emerging framework in the next section.

Focus of change

In line with our theoretical perspective, all sampled studies describe how the respective discontinuous technology undermines incumbents’ paradigms of value creation and value capture. However, while all studies highlighted shifts in the (bundle of) perceived use value, the underlying value-creation architecture, and/or the profit model (König et al., 2021), the studies emphasized different foci of the respective discontinuous technologies, especially as they relate to the technology’s impact on value capture.

Almost all sampled studies describe shifts in the (bundle of) perceived use value as focal to the discontinuous technological change. These studies explore how incumbents struggle as discontinuous technologies offer fundamentally new benefit dimensions but underperform in established benefit dimensions (Christensen, 1997; Vuori & Huy, 2022). For example, Raffaelli (2019) does so in his study of how Swiss makers of mechanical watches adapted to battery-powered quartz watches between 1970 and 2008. He conducted 136 interviews with industry experts, executives, and watchmakers, and analyzed company reports, press releases, industry journals, and advertisements to induce how incumbent firms, their decision-makers, and stakeholders can retrench into a market niche and, ultimately, make the old technology reemerge (Adner & Snow, 2010). His highly informant-based theorizing focuses on how the discontinuous technology delivered vastly superior accuracy at a significantly lower price, commoditizing time measurement, which was the primary benefit dimension in the established technological paradigm. Interestingly, Raffaelli (2019) describes how, while many Swiss mechanical watchmakers failed to adapt (Glasmeier, 1991), some incumbents successfully changed the bundle of benefit dimensions associated with their products by redefining mechanical watches as luxury items that emphasize craftsmanship, heritage, and exclusivity. Advertisements visually and textually supported this shift, featuring phrases such as “Breguet. Since 1775. Known to history as the watchmaker’s watchmaker” (Raffaelli, 2019: 17).

Only slightly fewer studies reveal shifts in the value-creation architecture introduced by a discontinuous technology as central to their context. These studies emphasize the unique challenges that leaders and other members of incumbent firms face in contexts where discontinuous technologies undermine traditional assumptions and processes of how customer benefits are developed, produced, and delivered, as well as the concomitant competencies (Adner, 2021; Eggers & Park, 2018; Tushman & Anderson, 1986). Garud and Munir (2008), for example, use interviews and extensive archival data to illuminate the relationships and strategic decisions around Polaroid’s development of the SX-70 camera, which involved a radical shift in the value-creation architecture. In particular, the SX-70 embodied a shift from Polaroid’s peel-apart, instant film to integral film. This shift collapsed multiple formerly separate processes (i.e., negative development, battery operation, and chemical reactions) into a single, integrated system. Thus, to commercialize the SX-70, Polaroid’s decision-makers had to substantially reorganize the product architecture, job descriptions, and organizational structures, and either modify or sever key strategic relationships (e.g., with Kodak). From their longitudinal case study, Garud and Munir (2008) induce the concept of “transformation costs.” Unlike transaction costs, which are more static and modular, transformation costs arise continuously, demanding significant investment in new capabilities, supplier coordination, and organizational restructuring. Notably, much qualitative research focusing on shifts in the value-creation architecture explores incumbents’ responses to the emergence of digital platforms in various industries, which are archetypal cases of non-paradigmatic shifts in value-creation architectures, especially given their meta-organizational nature and the central role of network effects (e.g., Reischauer et al., 2024).

Finally, substantially fewer studies explore contexts in which the discontinuous technology’s focus shifts in the profit model—that is, value capture (Bohnsack et al., 2024; Greenstein, 2017; Tripsas & Gavetti, 2000). Many of these studies develop theories regarding the specific processes of digital transformation and servitization. These process changes often focus on paradigm-challenging ways of capturing value, such as subscription-based models instead of one-time sales, “freemium” pricing schemes, and two-sided forms of transaction-based value capture in digital platforms (Altman, Nagle, & Tushman, 2022; Parker, Alstyne, & Choudary, 2016; Simsek, Heavey, König, & Stam, 2024).

Greenstein (2017), for example, offers a historically grounded, critical narrative investigation of Encyclopædia Britannica’s demise in the face of the rise of Microsoft Encarta—portraying it as a discontinuous technology with a focus on shifts in value appropriation. Encyclopædia Britannica historically enjoyed a quasi-monopoly, which allowed the company to extract high margins from printed encyclopedia sets priced between USD 1,500 and USD 2,000 and sold through commissioned salespeople (Greenstein, 2017). Encarta was priced at USD 99 or less and sold through retailers, which enabled low-margin, high-volume software economics (Greenstein, 2017) that were discontinuous from Encyclopædia Britannica’s perspective (Christensen, 1997). Greenstein (2017) illustrates how the transition from high-priced, direct-sales print encyclopedias to low-cost, multimedia digital encyclopedias distributed via CD-ROM fundamentally upended Britannica’s longstanding profit model. CD-ROM encyclopedias also shifted consumer expectations for how knowledge resources could be packaged, updated, and accessed, but one of the key disruptive mechanisms highlighted by Greenstein (2017) is the drastic shift in the underlying “economic logic” (Hambrick & Fredrickson, 2001). That logic paralyzed responses because a mass-market, retail-based distribution logic was not retro-compatible with Britannica’s high-margin book sales and door-to-door sales force. In turn, decision-makers felt little motivation and ability to reallocate resources to emerging digital products (Gilbert, 2005).

Stage of change

Another common thread running through the studies in our sample is the notion that a discontinuous technology passes through stages of change, and incumbents’ responses and the underlying processes may systematically differ over time in relation to these stages (Benner & Ranganathan, 2017; Cozzolino et al., 2018). Notably, many of the studies in our sample adopted process-theoretical approaches (Langley, 1999) that temporally bracketed the respective cases, experiences, and phenomena into phases (e.g., Gilbert, 2005; Raffaelli, DeJordy, & McDonald, 2022; Tripsas, 2009; Weber et al., 2019). However, as we pursued a more generalizable categorization across the studies, our analysis led us to group the studies depending on whether they covered the entire evolution of a discontinuous technology, which often spans several decades (Christensen, 1997), or focused on a specific stage of change. In so doing, we specifically referred to Anderson and Tushman’s (1990) differentiation of the era of ferment—the discontinuity’s genesis marked by high uncertainty and competing designs—from the era of incremental change, which is triggered by the emergence of a dominant design so that players begin to compete on incremental innovation and operational efficiency (Porter, 1998).

The studies in our sample primarily focused on the era of ferment, highlighting how decision-makers and employees in incumbent firms recognize, make sense of, and experience strategic ambiguity when confronted with many radically new competing technological trajectories (e.g., Berggren, Magnusson, & Sushandoyo, 2015; Eggers, 2016; Kaplan, 2008b; Schweizer, 2005). Vuori and colleagues, for example, collected a particularly rich set of interview data and other data that revealed the detrimental emotional and sociocognitive processes that evolved at Nokia during smartphones’ and the co-emerging digital platforms’ era of ferment (Vuori & Huy, 2016, 2022; Vuori & Tushman, 2024). Smartphone platforms, especially iOS and Android, transformed mobile phones into multifunctional digital ecosystems, fundamentally altering the basis of competition from standalone hardware to ecosystem-based value creation. Vuori and colleagues’ inquiries combine longitudinal data from different hierarchical levels, especially including the experiences of middle managers (Huy, 2002). They depict a vicious cycle of actors’ interpretations, emotional pressures, complacent leadership, and a lack of knowledge in the new technological domain in an incumbent firm during the era of ferment. Ultimately, the era of ferment exposed the actors to the pitfalls of emotionally charged decision-making and the difficulty of making sense when multiple technologies coexist without a clear standard.

Another, smaller subset of studies highlights incumbents’ responses when a dominant design or standard coalesces, and the discontinuous technology enters an era of incremental change (e.g., Burgelman, 2002; Danneels, 2002; Lantano, Petruzzelli, & Panniello, 2022). These studies reveal that the switch from the exploratory, discovery-driven mode of adaptation that dominates during the era of ferment to a more exploitative mode triggers unique pressures and challenges for actors in incumbent firms, representing another inherently “weak” point in incumbents’ adaptations to discontinuous technologies. Danneels (2002), for example, captures facets of this dynamic through a qualitative analysis of high-tech firms, including UltraSonic’s refinements of its ultrasonic flaw detectors. Originally, ultrasonic technology for nondestructive testing was itself discontinuous, but by the time Danneels (2002) observed UltraSonic, the technology had matured into an industry standard. Correspondingly, UltraSonic’s mode of innovation had transformed to focus on incremental refinements that improved efficiency and user experience by, for instance, replacing black-and-white screens with color screens. Based on triangulated insights from 34 interviews, on-site observations, and documents (including from other cases), Danneels (2002) points out the challenge incumbents face in trying to proactively avoid future path dependence and inertia upon entering the era of incremental change. Specifically, he develops a theoretical framework illustrating how incremental product innovations dynamically interact with firms’ technological and customer competencies, ultimately constraining future strategic flexibility.

Provenance of change

A significant share of the literature indicates how and why the origins, or provenance, of discontinuous technologies provide a context that shapes incumbents’ responses (Benner, 2010; Danneels, 2002). A common, often implicitly invoked dichotomy in this literature is that discontinuous technologies can originate either exogenously or endogenously. Exogenous provenance refers to discontinuous technological change introduced by de novo start-ups or de alio entrants (i.e., established organizations from other industries; Sosa, 2013). Discontinuous technologies of endogenous provenance emerge within the incumbents’ own R&D or are introduced by complementors in the existing value network (Adner & Lieberman, 2021; Turnheim & Geels, 2019; Warner & Wäger, 2019).

Many studies describe the focal discontinuous technology as exogenous—that is, as emerging at the periphery of the incumbent industry (e.g., Gilbert, 2005, 2006; Hargadon & Douglas, 2001; Kammerlander & Ganter, 2015; Rosenbloom, 2000; Weber et al., 2019). In fact, the notion of discontinuous technologies entering primarily from outside a given industry is somewhat inherent to their paradigm-challenging nature, which involves resources, capabilities, and often customers (Henderson, 2006) that are not central to the established industry (Christensen, 1997). For example, Gnyawali and Park (2011) study how two competing incumbents, Samsung Electronics and Sony Corporation, formed a joint venture to respond to the exogenously introduced transition from traditional cathode-ray tube (CRT) displays to flat-screen liquid-crystal-display (LCD) panels. LCD panels were largely pioneered by researchers and companies that were not traditionally involved in CRT technology but were instead active in the fields of chemistry and materials science (e.g., Wolfgang Helfrich worked at the Radio Corporation of America Laboratories before joining Hoffmann-La Roche in Switzerland). Based on an analysis of archival data, annual reports, and media coverage, Gnyawali and Park (2011) illustrate how the two incumbents were able to overcome some of the central difficulties of understanding complex, capital-intensive discontinuous technologies through co‑opetition. By balancing collaboration and competition, Samsung and Sony’s joint venture allowed them to reconfigure their capabilities, mitigate risks, and capture shared value.

Studies that center on contexts of endogenous discontinuous technologies converge on the idea that incumbent firms struggle, even if—and perhaps particularly if—a given discontinuous technology has emerged within their own organization or the established innovation ecosystem (e.g., Kahl & Grodal, 2016; Pemer & Werr, 2025; Turnheim & Geels, 2019). In this regard, Kahl and Grodal (2016) examine how IBM’s decision-makers deployed discursive practices during the introduction of the company’s early computers to, for example, overcome potential resistance among existing customers (Henderson, 2006; Kaplan, 2008a). As Kahl and Grodal (2016) explain, early computers represented a radical departure from the technological paradigm underlying mechanical tabulating machines. Computers allowed users to electronically process data, significantly enhancing speed, accuracy, and task complexity, while fundamentally altering data-processing workflows. Kahl and Grodal (2016) utilized multilevel discourse analysis of presentations, committee reports, and conference proceedings as well as historical reconstruction to unveil the strategic interplay of linguistic, visual, and contextual communication strategies adopted by IBM and its competitor, Remington Rand. The analysis shows, for example, that IBM deliberately framed the computer as familiar and accessible. In other words, they “bridged” the old and new paradigms (Benford & Snow, 2000) by emphasizing the technology’s endogenous nature, thereby reducing customer uncertainty (Raffaelli, Glynn, & Tushman, 2019).

Vector of encroachment

Another contextual attribute that emerged from our analysis was the vector of encroachment—that is, whether a discontinuous technology enters the market from the low or high end (Christensen, 1997, 2006).

Several studies in our sample focus on low-end encroachment. This classic “Christensenian” disruptive technology (Christensen, 1997) initially attracts less-demanding customers (for whom benefit dimensions not offered by the traditional technology may be more important) and price-sensitive customers, including “non-customers” who could not previously afford the incumbents’ products (e.g., Fraser & Ansari, 2021; Greenstein, 2017; König et al., 2021). Examples in this regard include studies of incumbent news organizations’ responses to the rise of online news, which is in many ways an archetypal case of low-end encroachment (Gilbert, 2005, 2006). Cozzolino et al. (2018), for instance, offer a longitudinal single-case study of GEDI Gruppo Editoriale SpA, a major Italian news media publisher, covering the period from 1995 to 2017. Cozzolino et al.’s (2018) research design, which leverages an extensive set of interviews and archival data, is particularly interesting because, somewhat comparable to a field experiment, the researchers “observe the effects of an exogenous treatment (the disruption caused by the internet) on a company’s [adaptive responses]” (Cozzolino et al., 2018: 1167). Much like other studies in our sample covering the rise of online news (e.g., Gilbert, 2005, 2006; König et al., 2021), Cozzolino et al.’s (2018) analysis reveals how threat perceptions among decision-makers trigger rather defensive adaptive responses. The authors also show that an incumbent can “open” its business model by increasing external knowledge access—in this specific case, the fact that the internet was available to all—facilitated access to factors of production. Notably, the study also relates to the group of studies focused on incumbents’ adaptations to the rise of digital platforms (Altman et al., 2022; Khanagha et al., 2018).

The studies investigating high-end encroachment reveal different patterns, exploring how incumbents react as new entrants deploy a discontinuous technology to initially target luxury or performance-focused niches, often using premium pricing and exclusivity to gain market traction (e.g., Bohnsack et al., 2014; Schweizer, 2005). Central mechanisms of inertia and barriers to adopting high-end discontinuous technologies, such as those stemming from resource dependency (Christensen & Bower, 1996; see King & Baatartogtokh, 2015, for a critical perspective), differ from those at play in incumbents’ responses to low-end encroachment.

A particularly rich study showing this facet of high-end encroachment is Rosenbloom’s (2000) historical case analysis (Argyres, De Massis, Foss, Frattini, Jones, & Silverman, 2020) of the National Cash Register Corporation (NCR), which illustrates how early electronic computing began as a premium, performance-focused offering—a hallmark of high-end encroachment. In the 1950s, NCR started to build and sell computers, even though these “giant brains,” which were advanced, large-scale machines designed for sophisticated users, such as government agencies, universities, and major firms, required entirely new capabilities in digital electronics and software. In Rosenbloom’s (2000) account, the fact that early computers encroached on the market from the high end was pivotal because it forced NCR to reckon with and eventually adopt a premium technology that lay outside of and competed with its mechanical “DNA.” One of many theoretical insights from this study—challenging certain Christensenian (1997) assumptions about disruptive innovation—is that even though the new technology initially targeted high-end (“best”) customers, there was substantial structural resistance against breaking from NCR’s entrenched mechanical competencies and the concomitant value-creation architecture. For instance, managers expected the new technology as “systematically too costly for the low end of the line” (p. 1094)—a consideration for the low end of the market that plays little role in Christensen (1997). In NCR’s case, leadership (specifically that of President and Chairman William S. Anderson) became a core dynamic capability.

Organizational context of the incumbent

Almost all of the sampled studies highlight elements of the focal incumbents’ unique organizational context. These studies invoke the—essentially microfoundational—notion that individual actors make and give sense to change as they operate in “meso and macro contexts, not least, teams, organizations, [and] institutions” (Hodgkinson et al., 2023: 1048; see also Burgelman, 2002; Gilbert, 2005). In particular, members of incumbents operate in a unique, historically grown sociocognitive and emotional surrounding when they deal with the extreme ambiguity involving discontinuous technologies and the potentially drastic changes involved (Kammerlander et al., 2018). At the same time, ontologically more objective structural needs, obligations, and costs also provide strong contingencies and dependencies to managerial sensemaking and, ultimately, incumbents’ responses (Garud & Munir, 2008; Junge, Luger, & Mammen, 2023; Sydow et al., 2009).

Many studies highlight the influence of the unique interpretive-affective context in the incumbent organization as central to the adaptive responses. The underlying notion—echoing the ontological assumptions of qualitative research—is that organizational change occurs through individual actors’ situated sensemaking, decision-making, and actions (Tsoukas & Chia, 2002). In other words, interpretations of what the focal discontinuous technology is and how members should best respond to it are the results of actors’ evolving and discursively negotiated social construction (Berger & Luckmann, 1967; Kaplan, 2008a). As such, these studies highlight how incumbents’ responses—including the “framing contests” among organizational members (Kaplan, 2008a)—unfold within and are shaped by historically formed logics and “rules” that (previous) organizational members “have consensually fashioned” prior to the emergence of the discontinuity (Gioia et al., 2022: 233; Raffaelli et al., 2019). These include (technological) cognitive frames and schemas—that is, the morphing but often sticky knowledge structures “through which actors reduce the complexity of the environment in order to be able to focus on particular features, make context-specific interpretations, decide, and act” (Kaplan & Tripsas, 2008: 4; Burgelman, 1983; Spieth, Röth, Clauss, & Klos, 2021).

Several studies in our sample emphasize the interplay between the interpretive processes of incumbents experiencing discontinuous technological change and perceptions of stress and emotional pressures (e.g., König et al., 2021; Vuori & Huy, 2022). In this regard, the historically evolved emotional climate and emotional capabilities in the organization surface as central contextual dimensions of how strategic leaders, middle managers, and employees interpret and deal with discontinuous technologies (Huy, 2002). This research also echoes the emerging understanding in cognitive and social psychology “of the inseparability of emotion and cognition in all but the least consequential of tasks and situations” (Hodgkinson et al., 2023: 1052). Vuori and Huy (2016), for instance, reveal how Nokia’s longstanding internal power constellations created fear in the organization. Most detrimentally, middle managers—afraid of punishment for sharing negative information with top managers—made them develop an overly “rosy” picture of Nokia’s abilities to compete against emerging smartphone-centered digital platforms, leading the top managers to underestimate the discontinuous technology.

Other studies, such as Kammerlander et al. (2018), highlight organizational identity—organizational members’ shared construals of “Who are we?”—as a deeply embedded element of the incumbent’s interpretive-affective context (Kammerlander et al., 2018; Tripsas, 2009; Van Dyck et al., 2024). They studied 14 German publishing houses’ responses to digitalization from the early 1990s through 2011, including using archival websites as a window into historical organizational identity perceptions. Kammerlander et al. (2018) induce that incumbents’ responses differed depending on organization members’ shared construals of their organizations’ “domain identity”—i.e., the organization’s perceived competitive “home turf” (Livengood & Reger, 2010), and the organization’s “role identity”—particularly, as either a shaper or follower—and of how the discontinuous technology challenged these identity perceptions. For example, members of one publishing house collectively perceived their company’s role identity as a “shaper” challenged by digitalization but did not perceive digitized products and services as part of its domain identity. In response, the publishing house exhibited response behaviors that the researchers compared to those of a samurai: rather than adopting digitalization, the company launched many innovative print products, thereby enacting its shaper identity in the “old” competitive domain. As the CEO summarized: “We will not produce junk just to survive” (Kammerlander et al., 2018: 1140).

In many studies, aspects of the focal incumbent’s specific technical configurations, value-creation architectures, financial and operational resources, and practices surface as affecting organizational sensemaking of and responses to a discontinuous technology (Hill & Rothaermel, 2003). We labeled these aspects as the incumbent’s structural context. Gilbert (2005, 2006) uses this wording in his case studies of North American newspaper publishers’ responses to the emergence of online news. Specifically, he invokes Bower’s (1970) resource allocation process model as frame of reference for the strategic context, denoting the characteristics of the reporting lines, control systems, and economic incentives that motivate (or deny) resources to a new business or proposal, including as it relates to embracing a discontinuous technology (Christensen & Bower, 1996; König et al., 2021; Smith, Binns, & Tushman, 2010). The emerging concept of structural context also echoes the role of structure in theories based on the Carnegie school—particularly the attention-based view (Ocasio, 1997), which various studies in our sample reference and which assigns an “independent role” to organizational structure, including procedural and communication channels, in steering managerial attention and resource allocation (Ocasio, 1997: 188).

Eggers’s (2016) study of IBM’s successful transition to liquid crystal (LCD) displays in the 1980s illustrates how unique structural context matters for our understanding of incumbent heterogeneity and the concomitantly limited generalizability between contexts. Eggers coded hundreds of internal and publicly available documents—from briefings for top executives and technical plans to patents and annual reports—to explore how IBM recovered from its failed early investments in plasma displays. His study is unique not only in that it focuses on the era of ferment and IBM’s failure in plasma as one of various “competing technological options” (Eggers, 2016: 1578), but also because it reveals the central role of IBM’s hybrid R&D structure in IBM’s ultimately successful adoption of LCD. As Eggers reveals, “IBM was centralized in that there was a single research group, but it was decentralized in that resource allocation rights for exploratory research were pushed down in the organization” (Eggers, 2016: 7). In particular, while a central research group funded “primary” research, product divisions could directly fund “secondary” research projects they deemed promising. This hybrid structure allowed IBM product divisions to continue exploring LCD technology even as senior management was committed to plasma. As such, IBM’s historically grown structural context (including a shared appreciation of independent “free” science) allowed IBM to maintain diverse technological options and overcome the inertia typically associated with failed investments.

Institutional role of the incumbent

Many of the sampled studies focus on the broader, institutional role of an incumbent, which shapes its response to a discontinuous technology. The underlying leitmotif is that, owing to their non-paradigmatic nature, discontinuous technologies challenge widely shared rules and laws, social norms and hierarchies, and practices (Neuhauser & Snihur, 2025; Weber et al., 2019). In other words, a discontinuous technology is, by definition, extraordinarily illegitimate—cognitively as well as normatively (Benner, 2007; Hensellek et al., 2025). Consequently, incumbents face unique dilemmas because they may need to embrace a discontinuous technology to survive but inherently risk their legitimacy if they do so, for instance among financial-market actors (Benner & Ranganathan, 2017) and broader society (Graf-Vlachy et al., 2023). As a result, the challenges of incumbents facing a discontinuous technology and the related adaptive mechanisms extend the firm’s boundaries and involve many “nonmarket” activities at the interorganizational, institutional level (Ansari et al., 2016; Snihur, Thomas, & Burgelman, 2018).

In this vein, qualitative studies in the field emphasize that the study of incumbents’ responses requires a “wide lens” (Adner, 2012) that considers the implications of discontinuous change in the incumbents’ overarching “value network” (Christensen, 1997) or “innovation ecosystem” (Adner & Kapoor, 2010; Danneels, Verona, & Provera, 2018; Fuentelsaz, Garrido, & Maicas, 2015; Zietsma, Ruebottom, & Slade Shantz, 2018). Many of these studies are theoretically motivated by the uniquely interorganizational, boundary-blurring nature of discontinuous technologies involving digital platforms, ecosystems, and the sharing economy (Altman et al., 2022; Reischauer et al., 2024). Almost all of the studies, at least implicitly, invoke institutional theory (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983) and focus on political and discursive processes, or “institutional work” (Benner & Ranganathan, 2017; Lehmann, Weber, Waldkirch, Graf-Vlachy, & König, 2022). Accordingly, many studies in our sample highlight constraining contexts, conceptualizing incumbents somewhat passively as “objects” of institutional pressures. In contrast, other studies highlight the agency of incumbents as institutional entrepreneurs.

Studies describing incumbent-as-object contexts narrate how external stakeholders, such as complementors, analysts, journalists, and industry associations, affect incumbents’ responses, often constraining discontinuous technology adoption (Benner, 2010). This dynamic surfaced most pronouncedly in studies exploring highly systemic discontinuities, such as digital platforms and AI, which undermine entire value networks and ecosystems (Adner & Kapoor, 2010; Pinkse, Bohnsack, & Kolk, 2014).

Weber et al. (2019), for instance, develop process theory on how managers in incumbent hotel companies made sense of emerging platform-based accommodation—particularly Airbnb—through the cognitive schemas of (technology-related) regulations, norms, and taken-for-granted assumptions. In particular, these authors use interviews and other qualitative data to reveal how institution-based sensemaking led incumbents’ decision-makers to ignore the discontinuity or to cognitively compartmentalize it during the era of ferment and to ultimately respond rather passively. For example, managers in incumbent hotels felt they were being treated unfairly because the new entrants had structural cost advantages (e.g., they were not bound by contracts with worker unions). The incumbents’ managers also felt confused because, although they saw Airbnb as highly inferior (Who would sleep on the dirty couch of someone they did not know?), some of their best customers (e.g., strategy consultants and investment bankers) gladly used Airbnb. Interestingly, many managers felt little urgency, as they relied on regulators and expected them to intervene. Many of Weber et al.’s (2019) observations are in line with classical institutional theory, which suggests that incumbents “recognize competitors or symbionts only when their attributes trigger shared boundary categories” (Abrahamson & Fombrun, 1994: 742).

In contrast, studies highlighting incumbent-as-actor contexts emphasize the agency of incumbent firms when responding to emerging discontinuous technologies (e.g., Eggers, 2016; König et al., 2012; Turnheim & Geels, 2019). These studies follow, implicitly at least, the lines of institutional entrepreneurship, which emphasizes actors’ power to maintain and change institutions and the related institutional processes (Garud, Hardy, & Maguire, 2007). Benner and Ranganathan (2017), for example, employ a multiple-case design to study the responses of telephony incumbents Verizon and Qwest to the emergence of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology. On the one hand, this study confirms that analysts may actively discourage incumbents from pursuing a discontinuous technology. On the other hand, the process model shows that analysts’ evaluative schemas change with technological change and that incumbents willing to adopt a discontinuous technology can manage those constraints using specific framing strategies. In particular, despite initial pressures for Verizon and Qwest to conform to traditional income metrics, the management’s efforts to reframe performance using growth-oriented measures eventually led analysts to modify their evaluative logic.

These findings resonate deeply with recent scholarship on the importance of framing in the evolution of discontinuous technologies (e.g., Ansari et al., 2016; Benner & Beunza, 2023; Graf-Vlachy et al., 2023; Kumaraswamy, Garud, & Ansari, 2018; Snihur et al., 2018) and with other studies in our sample (e.g., Vecchiato, 2020). For example, Zietsma et al. (2018) illustrate how incumbents institutionally engage to delay the rise of disruptive, renewable cleantech innovations, such as solar, wind, and biomass, that promise significant ecological benefits yet initially underperform traditional energy sources, especially nuclear, hydro, and fossil fuels. The study reveals that incumbents subtly manipulate institutional processes by aligning technological adoption with political cycles, reframing evaluative criteria, and managing temporal structures.

Technology

We generally call on researchers to draw on the dimensions of focus of change to describe the discontinuous technologies they study more clearly and in a more comparable way. A related research opportunity is to study how and why incumbents’ interpretations of, and responses to, a discontinuous technology differ—for example, in speed, aggressiveness, and “routine rigidity” (Gilbert, 2005), depending on the given discontinuous technology’s (socially constructed) focus. For example, incumbent decision makers may experience very different identity struggles (Kammerlander et al., 2018; Tripsas, 2009) when a technological discontinuity primarily introduces a new benefit bundle, compared to a technology that is deployed in a profit model that undermines the incumbents’ central revenue stream (König et al., 2021).

The notion of stages of change and broader aspects of time (Bansal, Shipp, Crilly, Jansen, Okhuysen, & Langley, 2025) also points to many research opportunities. For example, quickly emerging discontinuous technologies (e.g., generative AI) might generate an acute sense of crisis that catalyzes adaptive behaviors, whereas slow-burning or “lurking” discontinuities (recall, for example, the long arc of e-readers in publishing) could induce more incremental adjustments, which can paralyze incumbents’ responses. Notably, time and history are socially constructed and often strategically framed by strategic leaders through “temporal work” (Kaplan & Orlikowski, 2013). As such, how such temporal work unfolds in the context of incumbents’ responses to discontinuous technologies could be a particularly interesting research question—especially in the age of social media, fake news, and AI, which may help to distort temporal perceptions.

More generally, underlying our understanding of discontinuous technology (and both attributes—focus and stage) is the prevalent “Kuhnian” conceptualization of discontinuous technologies as “dramatic” departures from established innovation trajectories (Anderson & Tushman, 1990; Christensen & Bower, 1996; König et al., 2012). However, the dialectical underpinnings of this definition may inherently limit us and the research we review. For example, they may obscure how innovations might begin incrementally and become discontinuous later (or vice versa), and how they can fade, reemerge, or linger in stasis (Nelson, Anthony, & Tripsas, 2023; Raffaelli & Noe, 2025; Tsoukas & Chia, 2002). Sardo and Pfotenhauer’s (2025) study of diesel in Europe challenges the idea of diesel engines being disrupted by a singular event—Volkswagen’s “Dieselgate” scandal. Instead, they reveal a protracted, contested struggle among original equipment manufacturers, suppliers, policymakers, and consumer groups renegotiating diesel’s future. Consequently, future research may move beyond the flashpoint conceptualization of discontinuous change, embracing discontinuation as a negotiated, unfolding process. Scholars could also engage in paradoxical theorizing (Poole & Van de Ven, 1989) to develop competing but potentially enriching views of discontinuous technological change. Qualitative research— given both its diverse ontological underpinnings and its methodological approaches (Gioia et al., 2022)—should be particularly suited to yield deeper, more nuanced insights into unfolding cycles of technological making and unmaking.

Market

While a technology’s provenance (endogenous versus exogenous) and vector (direction of encroachment) surface in our review of the literature, the implications of these contextual attributes for incumbents’ adaptation remain significantly underexamined. In this regard, we highlight two theoretically rich and impactful lines of qualitative inquiry. First, research on organizational crises highlights that the line between endogenous and exogenous jolts is generally socially constructed (Bundy, Pfarrer, Short, & Coombs, 2017) but affects sociocognitive and strategic responses (e.g., by triggering different causal attributions). Thus, understanding technological discontinuities as (potential) crises, scholars could examine how members of incumbent organizations make sense of discontinuous technologies and give sense to others about them through the frames of “coming from within” and “coming from outside,” ultimately affecting social evaluations of these technologies and the adoption by incumbent firms.

Second, we know little about the idiosyncratic processes that unfold as incumbents face large, de alio entrants (e.g., Amazon or Google entering another business, such as insurance). De alio entrants differ markedly from start-ups in terms of capital, brand power, and global reach and may pose radically different threats to incumbents (Sosa, 2013). If, for instance, a car manufacturer suddenly faces competition from a tech giant’s AI-run, self-driving car, strategic decision-making and emotional reactions, including among top executives, will likely differ from those theorized for the classic “incumbent versus start-up” situation.

Organization and institutions

We call for more ethnographic approaches involving diaries (Rauch & Ansari, 2022), immersive fieldwork, or real-time observations (Gilbert, 2005; Tripsas, 2009), which can capture framing strategies, discursive interactions, and subtle shifts in interpretive schemas and emotions. Indeed, emotions, which are often pivotal in adaptation, are understudied in our sample. This is problematic because few challenges may be more taxing than managing the “pain” and fear that arise in an incumbent facing a discontinuous technology (Tushman, Newman, & Romanelli, 1986; Vuori & Huy, 2016). This may be particularly true for highly empathic leaders (König, Graf-Vlachy, Bundy, & Little, 2020). Emotional perspectives that integrate an upper-echelons perspective (Kurzhals, Graf-Vlachy, & König, 2020) and also take into account the dynamic interpersonal processes among strategic leaders in both the top management team and the board of directors (Krause, Withers, & Waller, 2025; Neely, Lovelace, Cowen, & Hiller, 2020) would help understand how emotional and strategic elements interact in this context.

Furthermore, researchers may test the boundary conditions of these human-centric models. For example, they could examine whether the primacy of factors such as legitimacy and trust holds in contexts of extreme institutional pressure or resource scarcity, or if they are superseded by more coercive, top-down mandates. Researchers should also examine how incumbents influence external discourses in the specific “new” context of social media, using it for political lobbying or public messaging to shape the trajectory of discontinuous technologies (Gray, Purdy, & Ansari, 2015). For instance, Elon Musk’s aggressive use of social media underscores how leaders may use mass communication to sway public opinion, mobilize supporters, or redefine norms around discontinuous change (Isaacson, 2023). Such (liberal or conservative) sociopolitical activism by top executives (Hambrick & Wowak, 2021) and the surrounding institutional work could be studied, for example, through novel discursive methods developed in political science, such as discourse network analysis (Leifeld, 2017). Much of this research will benefit from a greater focus on middle managers who actively engage to resolve legitimacy tensions (Ellis, Khanagha, Aalbers, & Tuertscher, 2025) and shape the emotional climate and cognitive trust in the organization and, in turn, the adoption of discontinuous technologies such as AI (Vuori, Burkhard, & Pitkäranta, 2025).

Interrelations between the domains

As illustrated in Figure 4, we see opportunities to examine the implications of dynamic interrelations between, and interactive effects of, our framework’s domains, attributes, and dimensions for incumbent heterogeneity. For instance, scholars may investigate how and why the implications of a discontinuous technology’s respective focus—how it exactly challenges the current paradigm of value creation and value capture—may be a function of its provenance (exogenous versus endogenous), and how a discontinuity’s focus and provenance together shape incumbent responses. In this regard, Adner and Lieberman (2021) implicitly point to subtle but consequential idiosyncrasies of incumbents’ responses to discontinuities that originate within established complementor-incumbent relationships. When a complementor’s innovation begins to commoditize and even substitute the focal incumbent’s offerings—shifting the locus of differentiation from within the business ecosystem—incumbent managers may experience barriers and dilemmas that differ significantly from those described in established theory on incumbent heterogeneity (Reischauer et al., 2024).

Relatedly, scholars could study how incumbents’ interpretive-affective and structural contexts may interact differently depending on the vector of encroachment. For instance, low-end encroachment could have different implications, compared to high-end encroachment, for how an incumbent led by a CEO with a strong narcissistic organizational identification—that is, a CEO who sees “his/her identity as core to the definition of the organization” (Galvin, Lange, & Ashforth, 2015)—responds to a discontinuous technology. Narcissistic identification may trigger faster and more aggressive responses to high-end encroachment than low-end encroachment. Multicase studies (Eisenhardt, 2021) could systematically explore these rich and complex mechanisms. Moreover—although we deliberately excluded (neo)configurational approaches (Misangyi, Greckhamer, Furnari, Fiss, Crilly, & Aguilera, 2016) from our sample of studies—we envision scholars could identify intriguing configurations for different outcomes related to discontinuous technology adoption (e.g., speed and aggressiveness; Hensellek et al., 2025) along the elements of our framework (see Leppänen, George, & Alexy, 2023). Certain conditions at the interpretive-affective and structural levels, for example, may be necessary for an incumbent to overcome routine rigidity in response to a particularly competence-destroying discontinuity emerging at the periphery of the focal industry (Gilbert, 2005). However, the absence of the same conditions may be necessary for overcoming routine rigidity in response to a discontinuous technology that primarily introduces new forms of value appropriation emerging within the focal industry.