This paper presents an empirical study that shows the relationship between innovation activities and the sustainable performance of firms in terms of market share and profit. While previous studies of innovation effects have focused on one type of innovation in the industry, such as incremental or radical innovations, the study of both incremental and architectural innovations in the same industry would enrich our understanding of innovation. This study discusses and emphasizes the importance of continuous incremental innovation and how switching-over to architectural innovation affects the sustainable performance of firms in the NAND flash memory industry. A systematic content analysis, comparing the changes in market and profit leadership in terms of continuous incremental innovation and an introduction of architectural innovation, was performed, and it was concluded that both continuous incremental innovation and switching-over to architectural innovation positively affects the sustainable market and profit leadership of firms. Additionally, architectural innovation reframes the technological lifecycle in the industry and gives a firm a chance to retain and continue its technological leadership by establishing new dominant designs. This study suggests that continuous incremental innovation is very important for high-tech firms, and firms should consider the option of switching-over to architectural innovation instead of the incremental development of current dominant design when the complexity of technology and market is increased in order to have a sustainable advantage.

Entry timing is critical for a firm’s sustainability, and it is determined after comparing the first mover advantage (FMA) and the late mover advantage (LMA). This study aims to continue the extant discussion on FMA and LMA to explore the important determinants and their effects on FMA or LMA in a smartphone market. The methodology of building a theory from a comparative case study is adopted using Apple iPhone and Samsung Galaxy cases in a smartphone market. This study verified that market- and firm-level determinants are more linked with FMA, and the isolating mechanism along with the environment as well as firm-level enablers are useful for explaining FMA. This study also uniquely found that the product-level determinant is closely linked with LMA, which has not been explored much in relation to LMA. This study theoretically contributed to extending the conceptual framework as well as enabling the mechanism of entry advantage, and it has managerial implications of how the first mover or the late mover can benefit from their entry advantage by exploiting their relative strength.

The ability and role of incumbents to enable and sustain disruptive innovation is underestimated so far, compared with new entrants. Thus, this research aimed to observe incumbents’ role as a disruptor and their disruptive behaviours to enable disruptive innovation in different market segments. Based on two case studies of CPU and foundry markets, it was observed that incumbents enabled disruptive innovation by adjusting disruptive window in the context of performance trajectories and discontinuous time, and they sustained their market leadership by having advantages through continuous cost reduction and accumulated technological knowledge in high performance and low cost market. This study has extended the theory of disruptive innovation by including incumbents’ role and their disruptive behaviours and has practical implications as well for incumbents and new entrants to establish competitive technology strategy at the organisation as well as national level.

Understanding customers and their behaviour has become important for success in a market. When successive generations of technology are available in a market, customers will decide their migration paths based on certain factors. This study focused on the relative advantage of successive generations positioned at different levels. Based on a longitudinal and comparative research design, the migration paths of customers are identified by understanding how their behaviours are affected by this relative advantage. The preferred relative advantage is positioned differently at early and majority markets. According to observations of the actual migration paths of 14 semiconductor customers, early and majority market players exhibit different migration paths (switching, new entrance, leapfrogging, or diffusion paths) depending on the relative advantage of the migrating generation. This study has theoretical implications by understanding the mechanism of customers’ migration based on the relative advantage, as well as practical implications for suppliers and customers to sustain their competitive advantage in a market.

In this study, we proposed the concept of hyper-coopetition based on an investigation of the inter-organizational relationships of chipmakers. Hyper-coopetition is distinguished from traditional coopetition by having companies in heterogeneous industries as participants, whereas traditional coopetition is a relationship between competitors in the same industry. To investigate antecedents and processes of hyper-coopetition, we established the conceptual framework of hyper-coopetition through a literature review. We conducted a case study on leading chipmakers, including Intel, Samsung, and Nvidia, to investigate antecedents and processes of the chipmakers’ hyper-coopetition. By examining hyper-coopetition, we contributed to the relevant academic field by introducing hyper-coopetition, its typology, and a new research agenda. The analysis result also brought managerial implications for companies in a rapidly changing environment.

The current disruptive innovation model has a limitation in incorporating customers’ demands while the customer can be a co-creator of value on performance, design, and price innovation. Thus, this research attempted to explore the disruptive innovation model which can include both the incumbent’s innovation trajectory and customer’s demand, and how incumbents behave to enable disruptive innovation in the smartphone market. Based on the Apple iPhone case study, this study verified that the current disruptive innovation model can incorporate customers’ demand by reflecting their demand in the direction of innovating the performance, design, or price of smartphones with the price-adjusted innovation trajectory. The secondary innovation trajectory which was found uniquely in this study is meaningful since it can be a creative solution for the innovator’s dilemma. Besides, Apple, as an incumbent, has behaved to innovate iPhone performance and design demands of customers creating significant papers and patents as outcomes of innovation activities. This study has practical implications for incumbents’ managers as well as customers to enable disruptive innovation in the smartphone market.