Authors

W. Tillmetz, Ulm University; T. Aigle, D. Graeber, Ulm University of Applied Sciences

Year

2026

Print Info

Production/Publication ÖVK

Summary

The traditional automotive industry can look back on a century of success, which has generated enormous prosperity in industrialized nations. Through continuous optimization - the so-called incremental innovations - increasingly attractive vehicles have been brought to market. After more than a century, the automotive industry is once again confronted with the game changing disruptive innovations. At that former times, Henry Ford, with the mass production of "gasoline carriages," and John D. Rockefeller, with the gasoline necessary for running the cars, drove horse-drawn carriages and their ecosystem out of the market. Today, it is renewable energy, electromobility, and internet technologies that are making life difficult for the traditional vehicle and fuel industries. For their strategy, it is essential to understand the typical, well-researched characteristics of disruptive innovation. These include the highly unpredictable development of markets for the entirely new products and the exponential growth in the early stages of market penetration. Rapid and flexible development processes and the continuous monitoring of the drivers of innovation, such as climate protection legislation in all relevant markets, are crucial. The often-criticized high costs and sometimes poor quality of new technologies regularly overlook the fact that technological advancements and rapidly growing production volumes lead to massive cost reductions and customer acceptance. Disruptive innovations require substantial financial resources in the early years until a critical production volume is reached, resources that do not align with the high return expectations of traditional business. One Hundred years of disruptive innovations analyzed by C.M. Christensen revealed a fundamental, consistent characteristic: Established corporations have almost never managed to achieve success with disruptive innovations on their own and actively shape global developments. They have mostly fallen victim to rapidly changing markets. This is primarily due to the structures and processes established over decades that were crucial for success with their traditional products.

ISBN

978-3-9504969-5-6

DOI

https://doi.org/10.62626/ouh1-13zn Copy link

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