Disruptive innovations in the sheet music industry:a multiple case study of entrepreneurial firms

Current disruptive innovation theories suggest that disruptors are eventually able to better address consumer needs with their technology. With a comparative case study of seven cases, we develop a theoretical model that proposes pathways along which entrepreneurial firms actually make sense of consumer needs in a digital innovation context with disruptive potential. One such pathway echoes an activist movement defined by a cause to democratize technology. Entrepreneurial firms along that pathway build their disruptive capability by orchestrating a broad community which exceeds the traditional boundaries of user and developer communities in digital technology settings. Our research hereby opens up new debates about the nature of disruption and introduces the idea of disruption by orchestrating a community