Understanding individual-level drivers of disruptive innovations: The role of founder's social identity
从社会身份视角出发，基于215家新创企业的两轮调查数据，发现创始人的达尔文主义身份取向和传教士身份取向对颠覆性创新有正向影响，而社群主义身份取向无显著影响。
This article adopts a social identity perspective to demonstrate that a founder's identity orientations are key individual-level drivers of disruptive innovation. We introduce the three identity type orientations—a founder's Darwinian, Communitarian, or Missionary identity orientation—and propose they play a distinct role in shaping the disruptiveness of new venture innovations. We examined our predictions with survey data from 215 ventures obtained in two waves from a first and second key informant from the venture's founding team. Our results reveal that a founder's Darwinian identity orientation, unlike hypothesized, has a positive effect on disruptive innovations. We find that a founder's Communitarian identity orientation has no significant effect on disruptive innovations, whereas a founder's Missionary identity orientation has a significant positive one. Our study advances research by viewing the individual drivers of disruptive innovation in the context of new ventures instead of incumbents, which most studies explore. Our findings have important implications for the identity–innovation nexus and underscore the relevance of founders' social categorization for disruptive innovations.