A Study of the Influence Mechanism of Digital Technology Affordance on the Disruptive Innovation of Enterprises

In the context of increasingly fierce global competition, utilizing digital technology to realize disruptive innovation is an effective way for enterprises to gain access to the mainstream market and form long-term competitive advantages. From the perspective of affordance, this study classifies digital technology affordance into cumulative affordance and variant affordance and explores the influence mechanism of digital technology affordance on enterprise disruptive innovation according to three core innovation phases: “fuzzy front-end–development–commercialization”. Based on 241 data points from different industries and types of enterprises, this empirical study found that (1) cumulative affordance and variant affordance have a significant positive impact on disruptive innovation and its “fuzzy front-end—development—commercialization” phases; (2) dynamic capabilities play a mediating role between digital technology affordance and disruptive innovation; and (3) the three aspects of dynamic capabilities—sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring—are greatly enhanced by cumulative affordance and variable affordance. These findings contribute to the research on the relationship between digital technology affordance and disruptive innovation and provide a micro-level perspective on how firms realize disruptive innovation through digital technology affordance.