Publications
Publications
- 2010
- Security Studies
We Cannot Go On: Disruptive Innovation and the First World War Royal Navy
By: Gautam Mukunda
Abstract
Insights from Disruptive Innovation theory (DI) are often used in the formulation, implementation, and evaluation of national security policy. DI explains why successful companies are sometimes defeated by new competitors with relatively unsophisticated products. Although DI is highly influential in the business literature, its applicability to military doctrine has not been persuasively shown. Proposed here is a more abstract and general version of DI, which improves its foundations, adapts it to militaries, and suggests a framework for the reliable identification of disruptive innovations. This new theory is tested by examining the Royal Navy before and during World War I and evaluating how well it explains the Royal Navy's success at developing Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) to protect the battlefleet from submarine attacks and the near failure at implementing convoy tactics to protect merchant shipping. This generalized version of DI successfully explains several key features of the case.
Keywords
Technology; History; National Security; Framework; Adaptation; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Technological Innovation; Machinery and Machining; Disruptive Innovation; Theory; Developing Countries and Economies; Technology Industry
Citation
Mukunda, Gautam. "We Cannot Go On: Disruptive Innovation and the First World War Royal Navy." Security Studies 19, no. 1 (2010).