Handbook of Management Scales/Competence-enhancing, competence-destroying innovation

Competence-enhancing/destroying innovation (alpha = 0.83)

Description

A comprehensive set of measures is developed to assess an innovation’s locus, type, and characteristics. The measure described on this page is one of these measures. It is found that the concepts of competence destroying and competence enhancing are composed of two distinct constructs that, although correlated, separately characterize an innovation: new competence acquisition and competence enhancement/destruction. Scales are developed to measure these constructs and show that new competence acquisition and competence enhancing/destroying are different from other innovation characteristics including core/peripheral and incremental/radical, as well as architectural and generational innovation types.

Following the typical process of scale construction, the empirical analysis is divided into four stages:

1. content face validity analysis with expert judges.
2. scale purification through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis.
3. assessment of discriminant and convergent validity through analysis of covariance structures.
4. nomological validity through the analysis of the effect of innovation characteristics on time to introduction and commercial success.

Definition

Competence-enhancing/destroying innovation concerns the degree to which the innovation builds on existing competences or the degree to which it makes them obsolete, these two notions being in opposite directions of the same competence-enhancing/destroying scale.

Items

• INNOVATION built a great deal on BUSINESS UNIT’S prior technological skills.
• INNOVATION built heavily on BUSINESS UNIT’S existing experience base.
• INNOVATION rendered BUSINESS UNIT’S experience base obsolete. (Reversed)
• INNOVATION built heavily on BUSINESS UNIT’S existing technological knowledge.
• INNOVATION rendered obsolete the expertise that was required to master the older technology. (Reversed)
• Mastery of the old technology did not help BUSINESS UNIT master INNOVATION. (Reversed)

Source

• Gatignon et al. (2002): A Structural Approach to Assessing Innovation: Construct Development of Innovation Locus, Type, and Characteristics. Management Science, Vol. 48, No. 9, pp. 1103–1122.