Handbook of Management Scales/Radical innovation

Radical innovation (alpha = 0.78)

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

Incremental innovations are those that improve price/performance advance at a rate consistent with the existing technical trajectory. Radical innovations advance the price/performance frontier by much more than the existing rate of progress.

Items

• INNOVATION is a minor improvement over the previous technology. (Reversed)
• INNOVATION was a breakthrough innovation.
• INNOVATION led to products that were difficult to replace with substitute using older technology.
• INNOVATION represents a major technological advance in SUBSYSTEM.

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.