Path to Realize Low-end Disruptive Innovation for Entrant Platform Firms:Based on a Case Study of Pinduoduo
Disruptive innovation,focusing on non-mainstream tech-nological and market trajectories and initiating new growth patterns,is an important strategy for latecomer firms in China to achieve catch-up.Especially in the context of digitization,China's internet and e-commerce industries have flourished,giving rise to platform firms such as Alibaba,Meituan,and Pinduoduo.While digital plat-forms have provided an opportunity window for latecomers,they also have introduced new market entry barriers such as scale effects and network effects.Digital platforms pose new challenges to the theory of disruptive innovation.An important research question is how can latecomer platform firms overcome incumbent platforms'scale and network effects to achieve disruptive innovation?From the perspective of dynamic capability and disruptive innova-tion,this study sheds light upon a latecomer platform firm's evolution process by exploring the path to achieve low-end disruption.We con-duct an instrumental case study on how Pinduoduo,a Chinese social e-commerce platform firm,to catch up two incumbent giants during 2015-2021 by analyzing secondary data according to the required procedure of the grounded theory.We find that the disruptive innova-tion is a dynamic process in which platform-based business model fit and co-evolve with dynamic capabilities.This process is divided into three phases:exploration(positioning the niche market),catching-up(entering the niche market),and disruption(disrupt the mainstream market).We further indicate that sensing capability,innovation capa-bility and digital capability are the key capabilities to realize disrup-tive platform business model innovation.In addition,the digital ca-pability is further refined into digital infrastructure,digital platform capability,digital network capability and digital management ability.In specific,during the exploration phase,platform enterprises use their sensing capabilities to identify and position themselves in niche markets.Due to the relative lack of resources in the early stages,they mainly rely on bundling complementary resources and profit-sharing distribution methods to achieve rapid user growth.This stage urgent-ly requires the upgrading of platform capabilities to support business model innovation in the catch-up phase.In the catch-up phase,late-comer platforms need digital infrastructure to increase user sticki-ness,as well as digital platform capabilities to reconstruct the value chain and expand the value network to form scale effects,in order to occupy niche markets.In the disruption phase,latecomers leverage their innovation capabilities,digital network capabilities,and digital management capabilities to empower product innovation and indus-trial digital transformation,building technological and ecological barriers to gradually erode and disrupt the mainstream market.The theoretical contributions of this paper are as follows:First,this study clarifies the new connotations of platform business models from the perspective of disruptive innovation,further extending and developing the theoretical content of disruptive innovation and platform ecosystem theories.While existing research has noted the realization mechanism of value co-creation in platform ecosystems,there is still a significant lack of research examining the value co-cre-ation mechanisms of platform business models from the perspective of integrating business models with platform strategies,especially regarding value capture mechanisms in the context of emerging dig-ital technologies.This study combines literature on business models and platform strategies to summarize and refine the attributes of value creation and value capture in platform business models,lay-ing a foundation for research on disruptive innovation theories for late-mover platform enterprises.Second,this study constructs a pro-cess model of how platform business models and dynamic capabilities co-evolve to achieve low-end disruption.Although existing literature emphasizes the importance of network effects for platform ecosys-tems,it hasn't answered why incumbent platform enterprises,despite having scale effects and network effects,failed to achieve"winner-takes-all"and were instead disrupted by latecomer platform firms.This paper argues that changes in value propositions within platform business models affect the value creation and value capture mecha-nisms among ecosystem members,dynamic capabilities support the adjustment and evolution of business models,and the value creation and capture within the ecosystem further promote the formation and evolution of platform dynamic capabilities.Through this theoretical framework,this study delineates the dynamic evolutionary path of dynamic capabilities and platform business models,addressing the gaps in existing research on how latecomer platforms break through the network effect thresholds of incumbents.Third,this study ex-pands and enriches the theoretical context and new connotations of dynamic capabilities in the digital economy background.This re-search further refines digital capabilities into digital infrastructure,digital platform capabilities,digital network capabilities,and digital management capabilities.It answers from a micro perspective the practical question of which capabilities latecomer platform firms need to cultivate for disruptive innovation,At the practical level,this provides valuable references for data-driven latecomer platforms in the digital economy context to formulate disruptive strategies and de-sign business models.
Disruptive InnovationDynamic CapabilityLatecomer Platform FirmBusiness Model
万方数据
