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Perspectives
Perspectives on disruptive on disruptive
technology and innovation technology

Exploring conflicts, characteristics

in emerging economies 313
Wan Liu
Received 30 September 2019
School of Management, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China Revised 11 December 2019
Accepted 26 February 2020
Ren-huai Liu
Research Center of Strategic Management, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China
Hui Chen
School of Management, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, and
Jet Mboga
Department of Management and International Business,
Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, USA

Abstract
Purpose – Disruptive technology and innovation represent complex conflicts in nature. This paper aims to
present an analytical review of the heterogeneity and conflicts that exist in the disruptive technology/
innovation between the eastern and western countries using Chinese high-speed railways to illustrate
disruptive innovation.
Design/methodology/approach – The emerging economy brings about other theoretical and practical
conflicts. Qualitative analysis is conducted on Chinese high-speed railways to assess the validity of
innovation characteristics using Professor Clayton M. Christensen’s theories of disruptive technology/
innovation and conflict. The authors explore the conflicts that can accompany the introduction of disruptive
technologies in the current platform and how appropriately this specific context can lessen these conflicts.
Findings – The study revealed that Christensen’s theories could be applied 100per cent to the Chinese context
if the western disruptive innovation theory can meet the practical requirements of Chinese disruptive technology/
innovation. Qualitative analysis showed that Chinese high-speed railways had experienced greater success with
disruptive innovation mechanism. The authors conclude that while the Chinese market is critical in shaping the
kind of innovations that are emerging there, many disruptive technologies/innovations in China have their roots
in the low-end market and new market. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.
Originality/value – There exists a research gap in the literature on the Chinese context. Conflict of
disruptive technology and innovation within China and the characteristics of the Chinese high-speed railway
prompt further research for scholars and practitioners.
Keywords Characteristics, Conflicts, Emerging economies, Chinese context,
Disruptive technology/innovation
Paper type Research paper

International Journal of Conflict

Management
Vol. 31 No. 3, 2020
The authors are greatly grateful for the helpful advice and comments provided by Steven Si and two pp. 313-331
anonymous reviewers. The authors also wish to express their sincere gratitude to Di Song for his © Emerald Publishing Limited
1044-4068
kind help for this manuscript. DOI 10.1108/IJCMA-09-2019-0172
IJCMA Introduction
31,3 Conflict management literature has provided many insights regarding how conflicts occur,
are recognized and managed from different units of analysis (Ade, 2019; Posthuma et al.,
2014; Peng and Tjosvold, 2011) and in various contexts (Caputo et al., 2019; Posthuma
et al., 2006). Recently, it has been proposed that literature on conflict management can be
significantly enriched by taking the emerging phenomenon of entrepreneurship and
314 innovation into considerations (Caputo et al., 2019). Among them, disruptive innovation, as a
unique category of innovation, attracting increasing attention in past years, involves many
conflicts and offers a valuable opportunity for scholars to investigate conflicts and conflict
management among the innovation.
Primarily proposed by Clayton M. Christensen (1997), the concept of disruptive
innovation can be understood as a type of technology/product/business model that
significantly affects the way a market or industry functions. As such, conflicts are by
themselves involved in the process of disruptive innovation. For example, in terms of
technologies, the introduction of new ones necessarily contrasts with the institution of
existing ones, which requires substantial efforts to tackle conflicts (Hargadon and
Douglas, 2001). Moreover, concerning the demand-side, conflicts associated with
unfulfilled customer’s needs can only drive for the emergence of conflicts (Christensen,
1997).
Although conflict management literature and disruptive innovation research have an
opportunity to benefit each other mutually, it is quite astonishing that scholars have placed
scant attention to bridge these two bodies of study. Notably, while scholarly observations in
developed economies initially developed the concept of disruptive innovation, some
interesting findings can also be possibly derived when concentration is directed to other
countries such as China. Different from their counterparts, indigenous innovation is
somewhat limited in past decades and the effect of governments can be remarkable.
This paper attempts to address three critical theoretical questions:

Q1. First, what characteristics could we summarize of Christensen’s disruptive

technology/innovation theories?
Q2. Second, will there be any conflicts when we apply this theory in emerging
economies?
Q3. Third, what role do conflicts play in disruptive innovation?
To answer these questions, we depend on Chinese high-speed train (HST) as a new case and
highlight two significant insights contributing to our understanding of these questions. On
the one hand, unsatisfied market demand coming from a handful of customers conflicts with
the prevalent technology. On the other hand, such conflicts can be primarily alleviated and
resolved by governments. The structure of this research article is presented in Figure 1.
Several contributions are made to the theory and the practice. Firstly, we contribute to
conflict management literature by investigating a new and compelling case of Chinese HST,
arguing that conflict management can trigger disruptive innovation and be dealt with by the
unique institutional environment. Secondly, this study adds new insights to disruptive
innovation research by linking this phenomenon to China’s emerging economy context. We
find that governments can be essential for Chinese disruptive innovation, complementing
existing notions derived from developed economies whose formal institutions are well-
established. Thirdly, our study also offers an approach for practitioners and especially
public sectors to tackle conflicts while introducing disruptive technologies.
 Perspectives
Characteristics of disruptive
technology /innovation on disruptive
technology

Emerging
Conflicts arise
economy context 315

Disruptive technology/innovation characteristics

of China

The perspective of In the institutional In the perspective of

nature of the perspective market trajectory
technology

Case study-Chinese HSR

Figure 1.
Framework of the
Discussion and conclusion research article

Theoretical background and research questions

Characteristics of disruptive technology and innovation: an overview
“Disruptive technology” first proposed comprehensively by the Harvard University
professor Clayton Christensen in 1997 in his book “the innovator’s dilemma”
(Christensen, 1997), which is defined as a type of technology to replace the existing
mainstream technology in unexpected ways. Its destructive and revolutionary thought
originally traced in economist Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” (Schumpeter, 1942).
Christensen’s work elaborated on what seems obvious, as new technologies (or innovations)
appear, old technologies either quickly or eventually perish. Latecomer firms always face a
catching up dilemma as follows: intense conflicts between central pressure of rapid
technological catching-up and severe constraints of available technological capability.
Christensen summarizes five characteristics of disruptive technology in his book
(Christensen, 1997):
 Attributes. A new disruptive technology initially underperforms mainstream
technology in all aspects, and disruptive technology is not valued as much by
mainstream customers as a mainstream technology.
IJCMA  Target customers. Marginal customers, usually new customers, often value disruptive
31,3 technologies. In comparison to dominant technologies, disruptive technologies provide
consumer’s accessibility to cheap and more uncomplicated products.
 Target markets. Profitable customers of large companies in the market often do not
need products based on disruptive technologies at first; therefore, disruptive
technologies are usually commercialized first in emerging or non-critical markets.
316  Strategy. The existing companies conclude that investing in disruptive technology
is not a reasonable financial decision because only the new disruptive technologies
improve steadily of its functionality; it could achieve the performance standards
required by the mainstream market.
 The final stage. The new (disruptive) technology replaces mainstream technology,
and new entrants replace the mainstream in the dominant market at this point
(Christensen, 1997).

Although scholars have different understandings of disruptive innovation (Thomond and

Lettice, 2002; Christensen and Raynor, 2003; Danneels, 2004; Rao et al., 2006; Adner, 2012;
Dijk et al., 2016), the description of disruptive innovation has the following common
characteristics:
 In the technology dimension, disruptive innovation is fundamentally a
discontinuous innovation (Watts, 2001; Corkindale, 2010), in other words, disruptive
innovation is not a continuous innovation on the trajectory of improving the
demand performance of the mainstream users but deviates from the performance
demand curve and introduces the performance attributes valued by low-end users
or new users (Bower and Christensen, 1995).
 From the product dimension, disruptive innovative products are often to be low-
cost, convenient and comprehensively reduce the overall cost of the target market.
This development of disruptive innovative products is a process of customer
satisfaction realization that continually meets the requirements of the mainstream
market.
 From the market dimension, disruptive innovation initially focuses on the marginal
market or emerging market that is not valued by the incumbents because of its low
profit.
 From the perspective of competition, disruptive innovation is “non-competitive” to a
certain extent because of the particularity of its market. “Non-competitive” means
that emerging enterprises do not compete fiercely with incumbents in the
mainstream market but realize its development by continuously satisfying the “non-
consuming” market.

To sum up, disruptive innovation has the following three key characteristics:
(1) disruptive innovation products tend to be low-cost;
(2) highly convenient; and
(3) comprehensively reduce the total cost of the target market.

Also, it deviates from the performance attributes that users in the mainstream market favor
and introduce the performance attributes that low-end users or new users’ value, to occupy
the low-end market or new market at last.
Emerging economy context Perspectives
The listed characteristics promote opportunities for unusual growth and “disruptive” on disruptive
incentives for emerging or developing enterprises. Disruptive technology/innovation is
gradually regarded as an essential growth mechanism for small enterprises to breakthrough
technology
industries, as well as an essential independent innovation mode and development path of
enterprises in emerging markets (Hang et al., 2010). The rapid economic development of
developing countries coupled with the fact that the majority of their populations cannot
317
afford foreign products designed for the developed world has made these emerging
economies fertile ground for developing and testing disruptive innovations – if affordable,
“good-enough” products that could meet consumers’ basic needs at a relatively low cost
(Christensen, 1997). The potential mass markets in the emerging economies have caught the
attention of enterprises from around the world.
The theory of disruptive innovation originated from the innovation practice of developed
countries, and Professor Christensen studied the industry mainly located in the USA as a
model for his theory. When the disruptive innovation theory is applied in emerging
economies such as China, the existing research of many views from different contexts seem
to form a unified, even conflicting ideological system, this may result in the future research
direction of fuzziness. Christensen’s theory is more practical for emerging economies (Wan
et al., 2015) such as China, which owns the vast territory. With limited raw material
resources and comparative advantage of the labor force, the development of talent coupled
with science and technology, the implementation of disruptive innovations in emerging
economies could be achieved through developing high-end markets and building new value.

Conflict management and disruptive innovation

Research on conflict management has already recognized that the introduction and adoption
of emerging technologies and innovations might potentially bring about conflicts (Wu et al.,
2017; Vollmer, 2015). To facilitate the receipt of new technologies, innovators should deal
with challenges from existing technologies that regard innovations as threats (Hargadon
and Douglas, 2001; Schulze et al., 2014). Similar wisdom was also documented in classic
innovation literature exploring how profits and values can be captured from innovations
(Teece, 1986; Von Hippel, 1988), highlighting the new technology itself should be
complemented with other resources and capabilities to reap superior returns.
Disruptive technology and innovation are not exceptional. As a particular type of
innovation repeatedly underscored in recent years (Christensen, 1997; Christensen et al.,
2009; Christensen et al., 2016), the conflict between new technology and existing technology
can be critically considerable (Osiyevskyy and Dewald, 2015; Sherif et al., 2006). Notably,
although disruptive technologies emerging from peripheral areas or primarily aim at
serving low-ends demand, its conflicts and contradictions with mainstream technologies
would necessarily happen. Besides, consistent with prior studies regarding unfulfilled
demands as a significant trigger for the emergence of disruptive technologies (Obal, 2017;
Sherif et al., 2006), it is arguably obscure how conflicts and conflict management influence
the process of disruptive innovation. While both practice and theoretical exploration of the
phenomenon of disruptive innovation are variant in recent years, it is astonishing to find
that little efforts up to date have been made to investigate the unique characteristics of
disruptive technology/innovation in China and how conflicts, as essential components
constituting to the process, influence disruptive innovation. This paper seeks to answer
three critical theoretical questions:
IJCMA Q4. First, what characteristics could we summarize of Christensen’s disruptive
31,3 technology/innovation theories?
Q5. Second, will there be any conflicts when we apply this theory in emerging
economies?
Q6. Third, what role do conflicts play in disruptive innovation?
318 Meanwhile, considering the insufficient exploration has been done to study the practice of
disruptive innovation in the context of emerging economies that are characterized by
unfavorable market and distinctive institutional conditions, this study uses Chinese HST as
a new case to explore the answer to the above question.

Disruptive technology/innovation characteristics of China

Studying disruptive technologies/innovations in different scenarios is an opportunity for
further theoretical development. Its technology, market, institutions influence the disruptive
technology/innovation activities based on the Chinese context and other factors in the
specific Asian context. In other words, it is a long-term dynamic process of co-evolution of
various factors. To understand better and assess the disruptive dichotomy under different
contexts, a closer look at disruptive innovations definitions is helpful. Many different
definitions of disruptive technology/innovation can be found in the literature. Therefore, we
can investigate the differences between disruptive technology/innovation studies in Chinese
and western contexts in top-tier international management journals. In this research, we
conduct a comparative analysis of characteristics in Chinese and western contexts within
the past 20 years of the disruptive technology/innovation theory. In general, the existing
research on disruptive technology/innovation covers many topics and perspectives in
different contexts. This paper provides an overview of a list of significant disruptive
technology/innovation literature that’s selected from top-tier journals and some prestigious
Chinese journals in Table I, and a closer analysis reveals that compared with disruptive
technology/innovation in western economies, the characteristics of disruptive technology/
innovation under Chinese context not only differ in detail but also even contradictory. The
following section explains these conflicts by highlighting delicate perspectives that must be
taken by analysts applying the disruption concept.

The perspective of nature of the technology

Technology innovation is the source of disruptive innovation in Christensen’s theory (Chen
et al., 2017) without technological change, disruptive innovation is like water without a
source. Christensen believes that the implementation of “disruptive technology” is the
process of combining labor, capital, raw materials and information into products and
services of higher value, and “innovation” exists in the change of one or several of these
technologies (Hwang and Christensen, 2008). Investigators found that most of the disruptive
innovations are based on fundamental, transformative technologies in the western context,
which promote the core competitiveness of those firms. The reason Christensen (1997) chose
disk drives as a case in “The Innovator’s Dilemma” is that it represented the most dynamic,
technologically discontinuous and complex industry one could find western economy, the
new versions might offer faster speed and higher memory storage than the previous ones.
In contrast to the indigenous innovation in western countries, the companies from China
do not necessarily use the latest or most sophisticated technologies and may not be able to
wait for breakthroughs of technology based on the principle of “good enough”
(Govindarajan et al., 2011). For the emerging economies because of the limitations of funds
Concept Literature Examples
Perspectives
on disruptive
Disruptive technology/ Nagy et al. (2016), Hard disk drive, digital technology
innovation in the Yu and Hang (2010), photography and mobile
western context Lange et al. (2009), phone
Carayannopoulos (2009),
Dewald and Bowen (2010),
Nault and Vandenbosch (2000), 319
Lyytinen and Rose (2003),
Kumaraswamy et al. (2018),
Christensen et al. (2016),
Kammerlander et al. (2018),
Gatignon et al. (2002),
Marx et al. (2014),
Chen and Turut (2013),
Sood and Tellis (2011),
Sinha et al. (2013),
Chevalier-Roignant et al. (2019),
Klenner et al. (2013) and
Roy and Cohen (2015)
Disruptive technology/ Adegbile and Sarpong (2018), Galanz’s microwave,
innovation in emerging Corsi and Di Minin (2014), Suzlon’s windmills and
economies Hang et al. (2010), Haier’s washing
Nuruzzaman et al. (2019), machine
Debruyne and Reibstein (2005),
Pandit et al. (2018) and
Li et al. (2018)
Disruptive technology/ Chen et al. (2017), Three-dimensional
innovation in China Gebremeskel and Nguyen (2012), printer
Xue and Zhang (2011), Sharing bikes
Xiong et al. (2017),
Tyfield (2018),
Zhao (2017),
Wan et al. (2015), Table I.
Zhang and Zhang (2017), Selected literature for
Zhang et al. (2017),
comparing
Si et al. (2015),
Ye et al. (2018), characteristics in
Lin et al. (2018), developed markets
Gui et al. (2018) and and emerging
Li (2013) economies

and research and development (R&D) talents, most of them will choose to introduce
advanced technology from developed countries, regions and enterprises, then absorb it and
put it into practice directly, thus shortening the technological renewal cycle. On the one
hand, this kind of imitative innovation will make the imitator frustrated under the
consistently raised innovation threshold of the imitator; on the other hand, the developing
countries and enterprises are eager to break through the restraint of developed countries
through independent innovation. Undoubtedly, disruptive innovation brings opportunities
for emerging economies to achieve technological development. Based on this fact, the choice
of disruptive technology/innovation has substantial practical value for the emerging
economies. Despite the uncertainties and difficulties of implementing disruptive technology/
innovation, as mentioned above, the “disadvantages” of the latecomers can satisfy the
IJCMA conditions for disruptive technology/innovation compared with the western countries.
31,3 Regions or enterprises with the “first-mover advantage” of technology as follows: their
technology is in its infancy, and the new technology system can be established without high
conversion costs. In terms of the global environment, the accelerating speed of knowledge
updating, the shortening of technology use cycle, and the emergence of new demands today
all provide a “late-developing advantage” platform for the emerging economies.
320
In the institutional perspective
The comparative distinction between eastern and western institutional regime adds another
option for classification and differentiation. Within the institutional framework, we would
examine three factors of importance influencing disruptive technology/innovation in
emerging markets, government support, the strength of legal protection and natural
resource endowment. Firstly, Chinese Governments continue to play a significant role in the
success of newcomers and incumbents. Scholars have argued that governments have a
crucial role in allocating resources to state-owned firms to build necessary capabilities at the
early stage of technological development (Lee et al., 2017). Necessary technological
capabilities enable state-owned firms that export or compete with foreign firms in home
markets to engage in disruptive innovation.
Conversely, the rule of law or formal institutions may constrain the diffusion of technology by
increasing the cost of disruptive innovation (Mahmood and Rufin, 2005). Consequently, local
firms that face pressures from foreign competitors within and outside their home market are less
likely to develop disruptive innovation when legal protection is reliable. Finally, according to
resource-based view theory, a combination of a firm’s resources, operating process and value
proposition determines its capabilities, strengths, weaknesses and blind spots (Wernerfelt, 1984;
Barney, 1991; Grant, 1996). In terms of resource acquisition of disruptive innovation, western
enterprises are more likely to obtain strategic resources compared with emerging economies.
Western enterprises can use abundant resources to enhance their innovation capabilities in a
broader range, which are often problematic to obtain in China. Emerging economies are relatively
falling behind in technological innovation and have a weak position in resource endowment. This
explains why Chinese incumbent enterprises often struggle to implement complete disruptive
innovation processes.

In the perspective of market trajectory

Large amounts of existing literature focus on investigating the market encroachment mode
of disruptive innovation (Xue and Zhang, 2011). Many researchers have expounded on the
characteristics of the two types of intrusion methods (Iyer et al., 2006; Wilson and Tyfield,
2018; Giachetti and Torrisi, 2018). In the book “the innovator’s solution, namely, creating
and sustaining successful growth,” (Christensen and Raynor, 2003) divide disruptive
innovation into a low-end and new market. The low-end market disruption takes the most
price-sensitive customers in the existing market as their targets and focuses on intrusion
from the low end of the original value network. It attracts consumers whose function
oversupplied by the market with minimal payment and meanwhile attracting high-end
customers in the same market by continuously improving performance. New-market
disruptive innovation aims to create a new value network that offers products with different
performance attributes to meet the needs of consumers who are overlooked or whose needs
are unsatisfied by existing products (Christensen et al., 2017). The challenge for new market
disruptive innovators is not to overcome market-leading firms, but to get rid of the situation
of “zero consumption” from new value networks. Disruptive innovators tend to create a
market that does not exist at all in new-market disruptive innovation, to put it another way; Perspectives
they found a way to turn non-consumers into consumers. on disruptive
Moreover, with further research on disruptive innovation, the scope of related studies has
gradually expanded from the initial low-end and new-market disruptive innovation to high-
technology
end disruptive innovation. Danneels (2004) first pointed out that the scope of disruptive
innovation is not limited to low-end and new-market disruptive innovation, and some
innovations should be classified as high-end disruptive innovations such as the replacement
of film cameras by digital cameras and the inventions of digital versatile disks replacing 321
video recorders, etc. Govindarajan and Kopalle (2006) used the case of telephone replacing
the mobile phone to explain the definition of high-end market disruptive innovation, and
they stated that high-end market disruptive innovation should be added to the traditional
disruptive innovation connotation. After that, Sood and Tellis (2011), Yu and Hang (2010)
and Parry and Kawakami (2017) all take high-end market disruptive innovation as an
essential aspect of disruptive innovation in their research.
We can conclude that Chinese enterprises implementing disruptive innovation mainly target
the low-end market and new market. At the same time, disruptive innovation in western
economies attracts customers not only in low-end markets and new markets but also in the high-
end market through our literature research. Firstly, amounts of low-end market economies exist
in emerging economies are because the majority of customers still prefer simpler, cheaper and
affordable products. When the performance of continuous technology exceeds the needs of low-
end consumers, a “technology surplus” arises (Christensen, 1997). Degenerating technology along
existing technology tracks or jumps into a low-end disruptive technology track using simplifying
technology to provide products with inferior performance that are “cheap, simple, compact and
convenient” to meet the needs of the low-end market. Disruptive technology has gradually
improved over time, and the product performance has gradually increased to the mainstream
demand level, thus, finally, achieving low-end market disruptions. The e-bike industry in China is
an example of small firms disrupting established motorcycle incumbents from below (Ruan et al.,
2014), and Galanz has achieved explosive growth through disruptive innovation based on the
low-end market (Wu et al., 2010). Secondly, the technological evolution of disruptive innovation in
new markets has deviated from the original technology track and entered a new market
technology track. Although the new technology track is inferior to the continuous technology
track in the performance of products valued in the current market, it has new product
performance and satisfies customers’ new needs. With time going, new product performance of
disruptive technologies has gradually risen to the mainstream demand level and achieving new
market disruptions. We can see cases of new market disruptions both in western countries and
emerging economies. For example, Alibaba has created a new value curve through disruptive
innovation based on new markets; Sony introduced the Walkman, allowing people to listen to
music wherever they want. Finally, in recent years, there has been a trend of high-end market
disruptions in western markets. For example, Tesla Motors chose to target at high prestige, high
margin and high-performance market segments with disruptive technologies and business
models, Apple’s mobile phone mainly attract high-end customers and improved generations of
durable goods to promote their competitive advantage (Grosse, 2015). Although these disruptive
products are not cheap because of high-end consumer groups have a high demand for current/
new products attributes, these needs cannot be met by continuous technology, low-end disruptive
technology or new market disruptive technology. Furthermore, the high-end disruptive
technology track intersects with such market demand and can well satisfy the market such as the
low-end market and new market. Therefore, when technological innovation breaks the trajectory
of technology from the original continuous technology track into the new high-end disruptive
technology track and high-end disruptive innovations will occur.
IJCMA Methodology
31,3 Case selection
In this study, we explore the characteristics of disruptive innovation under the Chinese
context by using a historical case, the introduction and implementation of Chinese HST.
This qualitative approach provides us with valuable opportunities to enrich our
understandings (Argyres et al., 2019; Hargadon and Douglas, 2001). We select this unique
322 case for three primary reasons. First, the introduction and implementation of Chinese HST
represents a proper example for disruptive innovation, containing an evolution starting
from a selective route in early days and currently becoming a chief means for Chinese
residents’ inter-city transportation. Second, conflicts and conflict management are deeply
involved in the process of introduction. In the first few years, for instance, some accidents
raised concerns among the population. Third, this project well characterizes the context of
an emerging economy and in particular, China, as the significant role of government support
could be observed during the process (Bruton et al., 2013), facilitating to respond to
disruptive innovation research that lacks sufficient attention to the uniqueness of emerging
economies. Fourth, many documents, news, research reports are available for these lively
cases (Chen, 2012), which allows us to approach and present the “facts” with ease.
Considering the above advantages associated with Chinese HST, we rely on the analysis of
this historic case. Below, a more detailed introduction for Chinese HST and its introduction
as a transportation means follows.

Case introduction
Transportation infrastructure is identified as a critical element contributing to a tourism
destination’s competitiveness (Chew, 1987; Prideaux, 2000). A growing body of literature
has delved into the phenomenal impact of transportation systems on tourism demand
(Khadaroo and Seetanah, 2007; Tsui, 2017), recently putting under the spotlight the high-
speed rail (HSR) that ushers in a new era of connectivity in many destinations (Albalate
et al., 2017; Sun and Lin, 2018). First, debuting in Japan in 1964, HSR has induced profound
changes to travel patterns worldwide by facilitating seamless, fast and safe commuting.
Among the countries embracing the unprecedented success of HSR, China has emerged as a
significant player and a formidable beneficiary via its aggressive roll-out of HSR networks
in the past decade. The first HSR line in China was introduced in 2004. It rapidly becomes
the most extended and most heavily used HSR system in the world, reaching an annual
ridership of over 1.71 billion in 2017 (Zhou, 2018). This transformation exerts a long-lasting
impact on economic productivity and revolutionizes people’s lifestyles shaping their travel
decisions (Chan and Yuan, 2017).
Despite its great importance to the tourism industry, the association between HSR
construction in China and disruptive technology/innovation has not yet received much
attention. Existing studies remain fragmented and sporadic, with a case study of the
minimal city and year coverage (Yan et al., 2014) or a data set consisting solely of
international tourists that represent less than 1 per cent of the total tourist population in
China (Chen and Haynes, 2015). Although a recent study has thoroughly investigated how
the provision of an HSR service influences tourism development in Spain (Albalate et al.,
2017), it is worth noting that China mainly differs from European countries in a multitude of
ways such as institutions, market trajectory, companies’ internal capabilities and the nature
of the technology of high-speed railways. As the most populous country and the second-
largest economy in the world, China is still undergoing a momentous economic
transformation and urbanization, and thus, may not wholly reproduce the experience of the
West. With the remarkable achievement of the construction of HSR, the world is casting
their eyes on the power that China’s tourism market can wield. It remains unclear how this Perspectives
new transportation system could be treated as an illustrative disruptive technology/ on disruptive
innovation case in the Chinese context, primarily how it could be used to demonstrate
characteristics of disruptive technology/innovation mentioned above.
technology

Findings
From the perspective of technology: conflicts triggering the emergence of disruptive 323
technologies
The development of the high-speed railway in China has gone through three stages. From
1992 to 2004, China independently developed units of electric bullet trains named “great
white shark,” “Pioneer,” “China star” and “Changbaishan.” During this period, the
investment in HST R&D was high, and there were some problems to be solved such as
limited speed and poor safety performance. From 2004 to 2006, the introduction of the HST
technology from four western enterprises, including Bombardier of Canada, Kawasaki
Heavy Industries of Japan, Alstom of France and Siemens of Germany, its safety
performance was significantly improved. From 2007 until now, based on technology
introduction and absorption, many new models such as “harmony” have been produced.
With the re-innovation of HSTs in China, the scale production effect has led to the reduction
of research and design costs, and the function performance has gradually been stabled
(Shaw et al., 2014).
The conflicts that we found triggering this disruptive innovation in our case studies
included as follows: the China Railway Corp. disruption of the transportation industry by
offering high-speed railways to passengers with adequate efficiency and reliability. These
services also include convenience, customization to ordinary people’s needs, and service to
the remote distance is at a comparatively lower price than its competitors-airways. In the
initial stage, the quality and performance of HSTs are not stable, and it only covers very few
lines. Because traditional technology development processes in most industries are
generally not designed to create and deliver disruptive innovation (Christensen, 1997), we
conjectured that disruptive technology with a different modus operandi and different goals
and performance criteria might need to be implemented to promote disruptive innovation.
The first finding of our research is that China Railway Corp. has developed to enable them to
create and deliver on opportunities for disruptive innovation of HST-especially of the types
of innovation, cost, application and business model innovation found to be adopted in
western countries (Wan et al., 2015). Limited in technology, the Chinese Government chooses
the way from learning technologies from western countries and then innovate dependently.
With the continuous increase of national R&D investment, the innovation capability of
enterprises and relevant R&D institutions has dramatically improved, and technological
maturity has continuously enhanced.

From the perspective of market: governments as agents resolving conflicts

Compared with sustaining innovation, one of the characteristics of disruptive innovation is
that new products can adapt to new customers’ value measurement standards and attract
potential consumers to new market networks (Christensen et al., 2017). At first, the new
technology will not directly infringe on the mainstream market, but with the improvement
of products, consumers can gradually break away from the original value network and enter
the new market. Modern modes of transportation include expressways, ordinary railways,
high-speed railways and civil aviation. In the transportation market, there is such a group of
consumers who have higher requirements for the speed, convenience and safety of
transportation. However, there are no products that can meet this demand in the existing
IJCMA transportation system. For example, for many enterprises or government officials, although
31,3 ordinary railways were treated as a cost-effective and safe way of transportation within a
certain distance of travel, fewer lines and slower speed make it difficult for them to accept
this mode of travel. This kind of consumer is eager to have a faster way of transportation on
the premise of ensuring safety. Such an unsatisfied consumer need is the basis for new
market disruptive innovation.
324 Existing research on disruptive technology/innovation usually focuses on the nature of
the technology and market level, but few studies involve the institutional analysis (Iyer et al.,
2006). The difference of this case is to take high-speed railway as an example to explore the
disruptive innovation of large enterprises and the leading role of government in it. While all
private firms might agree regarding the expected long-term benefits of disruptive
innovation, the adoption of the innovation may constrain the ability of some stakeholders to
attain their short-term goals. The presence of goal conflicts, along with the difficulties of
attaining goals, likely results in a lack of commitment, a decline in an expended effort and a
drop-in performance (Locke et al., 1988). Thus, support from the government seems to play a
crucial role in the success of the Chinese HSR program. From technology introduction to the
development stage, from subsidizing R&D to centralized market control, the guidance and
financial support of government are the critical reasons why Chinese HSTs are developing
faster than other countries.

Discussion and conclusion

Disruptive technology/innovation represent conflicts in nature (Sherif et al., 2006). Re-
examining the streams of literature in the domain, we gain an in-depth view of the scholarly
perception of disruptions in different scenarios. Our literature review highlights the overlap
between the concepts such as disruptive innovation and conflicts, defining characteristics of
disruptive technologies and summarizing the characteristics under the western context.
These emphasize the need to understand disruptive technology, and disruptive innovation,
precisely as we see emerging economies flourish, by volume of articles, characteristics of
disruption under such context relatively late coming.

Contributions
The findings of this study suggest that the characteristics of disruptive technology/
innovation have differential aspects under different contexts. While not conclusive, these
results support the idea that the characteristics of the disruptive innovation must be
considered along with the specific environment in which they operate if researchers hope to
understand the mechanisms needed for successful disruptive innovation. This study
attempts to address the oversights mentioned above. By bridging conflict management and
disruptive innovation, which were traditionally separated research streams together, and
drawing on Chinese HST as a case of novelty, this study provides several theoretical and
practical contributions.
Primarily, this piece of work has contributed to conflict management literature through
an analysis investigating the exciting case of Chinese HST, proposing that conflict
management can be a trigger for the emergence of disruptive innovation and subsequently
solved by governmental action. Previously, considerations have been given to examining
how innovations can be introduced and successful by resolving conflicts (Hargadon and
Douglas, 2001); however, given the prevalence of disruptive innovation, this study directly
investigates the emergence of victory of disruptive technology, considering the role of
conflicts among the process.
 Also, this study offers some fresh insights into disruptive innovation literature as well. Perspectives
On the one hand, while the existing literature has slowly generated nuances from the context on disruptive
of developed economies, we investigate the issue of disruptive technology and innovation in
one unique and intriguing context, China. As most prior research studies have primarily
technology
considered that the replacement of dominant technologies is triggered by some efforts
associated with market capabilities and assets, this study offers a piece of evidence that
governments play a vital role during the process (Wei et al., 2018). On the other hand, this
study enriches the literature by providing a comprehensive framework introducing how the 325
HST emerged, compete, and finally, replaced the dominant railway system. This piece of
empirical evidence will interest researchers concentrating on disruptive innovation.
Finally, our study also offers an approach for practitioners and especially public sectors
to tackle conflicts while introducing disruptive technologies. The HST case provides details
about how the government manages tasks, relationships and conflicts, as well as the
performance and satisfaction tradeoffs associated with choices in conflict resolution
strategies. We look at conflict resolution strategies at the national level rather than
individual level (i.e. individual conflict styles), and we induce multiple perspectives of
understanding Chines disruptive technology and innovation using team-level strategies
rather than a single strategy. In that sense, we take a closer or more fine-grained look at
national-level conflict resolution strategies than has been done in the past.

Implications
Our work draws three implications. The first implication focuses on a call for further
research on the frameworks and interconnections of characteristics of disruptive
technology/disruptive innovation tackling conflicts under different contexts. We argue that
existing literature shows multiple overlaps between the concepts, but literature seldom pays
attention to the difference of usage of the theory in different scenarios. Albeit that the
perspective of the characteristics of disruptive innovation is still in need of significant
theory formulation (Suominen and Newman, 2017), while the theory of disruptive innovation
is much more evolved, research studies should look toward a framework integrating the
concept of disruptions and conflicts. As a research agenda, future studies should look
toward perspectives interpretation, going beyond operational interests, within the
disruptive innovation specific environment, to explore fit to frameworks of the disruptive
potential of an innovation. This would have clear implications in strategy-driven disruptive
technology and disruptive innovation in different contexts.
Second, our work raises an important question for researchers and practitioners:

Q7. How does our argument about the necessity for emerging economies promote
conflicts and disruptive technology/innovation in an age of increasing economic
globalization?
In other words, even though the different context has its uniqueness, with pressures of
competitiveness in the globalizing economy, emerging economies or developed markets will not
be isolated. It is often argued that attention must be paid to local or regional systems of disruptive
innovation, which are premised on the belief that territorial agglomeration provides the best
context for an innovation-based globalizing economy because of localized learning processes and
“sticky” knowledge grounded in social interaction (Asheim and Isaksen, 2002; Asheim and
Coenen, 2006; Breschi and Malerba, 1997; Mytelka and Farinelli, 2000).
Third, our work suggests that potential empirical research could provide additional
support for the myriad of if characteristics proposed above matching the Chinese context
and demonstrate the possible impacts of each factor disruptive innovation in emerging
IJCMA economies. Empirical research is also needed on the disruptive innovation orientation and
31,3 innovation climate of each emerging economy country. While the analysis of market
preference has shown the importance of low-end market and new market in disruptive
innovation at the emerging economies, a specific country’s innovation orientation is an
attempt to develop the market, high-end market, etc. In this regard, both emerging
economies and developed countries are complementary to each other, and the emerging
326 economies must pay as much attention to understanding the nature of the market as to
explore new opportunities.

Limitations
We acknowledge that this article has limitations. In this paper, we attempt to draw together
the broad and diverse research literature on disruptive technology/innovation and the
relevant contributions of characteristics in emerging economies to develop a framework
relating to the nature of the technology, the institutions and the market trajectory. Our
review suggests that the complexity and uncertainty of the environment in emerging
economies bring conflicts and affect the degree, type, implementation and success of
disruptive technology/innovation. However, all the theoretical thoughts must be tested
empirically. We believe that the provision of the data with complementary details in the case
study would be more persuasive. Also, a better understanding of the characteristics of the
Chinese context and other environmental contingencies were not considered in this paper.
This may provide finer-grained theories to guide disruptive technology/innovation research
and more precise and more consistent advice for management practice. Finally, multi-case
studies would be beneficial to future relevant research studies. A large number of disruptive
technology and innovation cases under the Chinese context being lodged with conflicts
management and the like across countries are neglected. As a result, there is a yearning need
for more cases under different contexts besides western countries that capture innovator
views of the nature of conflicts in disruptive innovations.

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pp. 159-161.

Corresponding author
Wan Liu can be contacted at: liuwan@zju.edu.cn

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