Disruptive or Sustaining Impact of WLAN Hotspots?: The Role of Business Model Innovation in the Western European Hotspot Markets

Clayton Christensen’s work on disruptive technology and related theories have received extensive coverage and attention in business publications, management research and practise (Danneels, 2004; Hüsig et al., 2005). The term “disruptive technology” finds more than 300,000 entries in Google which is quite close to the more traditional innovation category “radical innovation” with around 495,000 Hits in the beginning of 2011. Not many scholars achieve similar success in popularising their key concepts. All of the historical case studies of Christensen are disruptive technologies that did succeed (Christensen, 1997; Christensen & Raynor, 2003). However, the real challenge to this theory, especially if it is to be useful managerially, is how it performs predictively (Danneels, 2004). In other words, can the theory be used not only to analyze cases post hoc but also to predict the outcome of cases ex ante? For managerial purposes, Christensen’s framework would be most useful if it allowed a manager to Disruptive or Sustaining Impact of WLAN Hotspots? The Role of Business Model Innovation in the Western European Hotspot Markets