Disruptive innovations in complex product systems industries: A case study

We propose that disruptive changes pertaining to complex product systems (CoPS) will yield a different set of characteristics than those traditionally observed for commodity products, and seek evidence for this proposition in a case study of the Flash Converting technology, a disruptive CoPS innovation in the copper production industry. Our results show that unlike disruptions in commodity product industries, the incumbent CoPS technology does not overshoot mainstream market performance demand. Also, the disruptive CoPS innovation: (i) is not nurtured in low-end niche markets; (ii) initially satisfies mainstream market performance demand, and; (iii) has higher unit price than the incumbent technology.