Emerging Customer Orientation,External Knowledge Search and Disruptive Innovation
Disruptive innovation,as a vital strategy for enterprises'autonomous innovation and breakthrough development,not only necessitates foresight in technological insights but also requires a profound understanding of and swift response to emerging customers.Emerging customer orientation,as a market-oriented strategy,emphasizes the anticipation and insight of enterprises into the forming or rapidly changing needs and preferences of customers.It compels enterprises to explore and fulfill the latent expectations and demands of emerging customers,thereby guiding them to diverge from existing experiences to seek new technological and market knowledge,which aligns with the type of knowledge needed for disruptive innovation.Thus,external knowledge search might play a significant role as a transmission medium for the successful realization of disruptive innovation driven by emerging customer orientation,however,current studies have not thoroughly explored this process mechanism.Accordingly,this paper constructs an"Emerging Customer Orientation-External Knowledge Search-Disruptive Innovation"relationship model from the perspective of knowledge search,to investigate the mechanism through which emerging customer orientation impacts enterprises'disruptive innovation.Using empirical data from 315 surveys of Chinese manufacturing enterprises,the findings indicate that emerging customer orientation,as a strategic direction for identifying potential customers,serves as a key driver for enterprises to engage in disruptive innovation activities,with external knowledge search playing a crucial intermediary effect.Specifically,emerging customer orientation can indirectly foster outward disruptive innovation through external technology knowledge search and external market knowledge search;its influence on inward disruptive innovation is exerted solely through the intermediary effect of external technology knowledge search.Furthermore,the study discovers that emerging customer orientation positively supports enterprises in conducting both external technology knowledge search and external market knowledge search;a nonlinear relationship exists between external knowledge search and disruptive innovation.External technology knowledge search has a U-shaped relationship with both outward and inward disruptive innovations,whereas external market knowledge search only shows a U-shaped relationship with outward disruptive innovation,with no significant impact on inward disruptive innovation.Additionally,a balanced approach to external technology and market knowledge search can facilitate enterprises to introduce disruptive products into external markets,benefiting the implementation of outward disruptive innovation and disrupting the markets of competitors.Unfortunately,this paper did not verify the impact of the combined search of external technology knowledge and external market knowledge on inward disruptive innovation.The theoretical contributions of this paper are mainly as follows:first of all,by exploring the intrinsic process mechanisms between emerging customer orientation and different types of disruptive innovations,this paper provides a new theoretical framework for elucidating the specific mechanisms of action between emerging customer orientation and disruptive innovation,refining and expanding the conclusions of existing studies.Second,although existing research has noted the association between customer orientation and knowledge search,there is still a lack of specific explanation for the relationship between emerging customer orientation and external knowledge search.The conclusions of this paper help to clarify the specific mechanisms of action of emerging customer orientation on external knowledge search,expanding and supplementing existing research on the important antecedents of external knowledge search.Third,this paper confirms that external technology knowledge search and external market knowledge search,as two different search modes,have differentiated mechanisms of action in influencing different types of disruptive innovations for enterprises.
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
维普
