Disruptive Innovation…in Reverse: a Theoretical Framework to Look at New Product Development from Emerging Economies

It is now clear that emerging economies are gaining increasing importance in the global innovation system. Their actual role is perhaps the central question driving the growing interest in this topic and to which this paper attempts to respond. Although several authors have identified and discussed the process of innovation from emerging economies, it remains under-explored. We view the disruptive innovation (Christensen, 1997) and reverse innovation (Immelt et al, 2009) paradigms side by side: two theories that we think offer interesting and complementary perspectives when we position emerging markets at the centre of the stage as a source of innovation. By analyzing different definitions and descriptions provided by the literature on innovation for and from emerging economies, this paper attempts a reinterpretation of the concept of reverse innovation, defined as a type of disruptive innovation.