Disruption Through Complements

Abstract

We expand the perspective on disruption by going beyond substitute products to consider the ways in which complements can impact the competitiveness of incumbents. Complementors represent a different kind of disruptive threat, one that is latent within the initial structure of value creation: complementors that disrupt are not new entrants but, rather, established actors that can shift their impact from positive to negative. With this perspective, we consider how ecosystem dynamics can clarify aspects of disruptive competition, and we use the dynamics of disruption to illuminate dimensions of competition in ecosystem settings. We elaborate three processes through which disruption through complements can occur: commoditization, adjacent entry, and value inversion. For each process we discuss specific examples, and we illustrate their interaction in the context of the automotive industry, which is fast evolving in response to technological change. In so doing, the paper fills a critical gap in the literature, which is so far missing a systematic examination of how complementors can disrupt established firms.