Digital Disruption: A Conceptual Clarification

Abstract

Digital disruption is emerging as a widely used term in academic and practitioner discourse. Yet, there are few studies attempting to theorize it beyond public media conjectures. The concept risks losing its theoretical value without a grounding in its theoretical foundation – digital innovations and disruptive innovations. As a result, the term lacks precision and confounds phenomena that are neither sufficiently digital, innovative, or disruptive. This undermines the utility of the term for researchers and practitioners alike. In this paper, we conceptualize digital disruption by attending to its properties that emanate from its conceptual roots of digital innovation and disruptive innovation. In doing so, we seek to add to past work calling us to pay attention to the needed caution in chronicling digital phenomena beyond fads.