Disruptive Innovation Path of Start-Ups in the Digital Context: The Perspective of Dynamic Capabilities

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article is very interesting, up-to-date and concerns the current issues, despite some imprecise, indirect, and sometimes unclear formulations and descriptions of the undertaken activities.

Without diminishing the contribution of the authors, the content of the article seems more suited to a management, strategy and/or new technology journal than sustainability.

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Line 218: “In order to avoid common method bias, this paper uses triangulation to cross-check and complement the collected data to improve the reliability and validity of "theoretical sampling" by means of "triangulation” – What does it mean “theoretical sampling”? What do you mean by “triangulation”? Give more details, explain.

Lines 252-254: “Taking the subjective survival consciousness of the enterprise as the motivation, based on the construction of a "dual fusion" model driven by digital technology and dynamic capabilities, the low-order dynamic capabilities push the enterprise into the sprout stage of disruptive innovation”. – This passage requires reference or more detailed explanation, as “subjective survival consciousness” is usually individual and belongs to human being, not to artificial and collective structures such as an organization. What do you mean by “dual fusion”?

Specific considerations:

Lines 25, 26, 28: add space before references in brackets.

Line 48: unintelligible phrase – review.

Line 116: “Zhou. S et al. [33]” – probably it should be “Zhou et al. [33]”.

Line 133: add space before references in brackets.

Line 148: “Oghazi. P et al. [43]” – probably it should be “Oghazi et al. [43]”.

Line 152: “Morizet. D et al. [45]” – probably it should be “Morizet et al. [45]”.

Line 154: “O’Reilly. C et al. [46]” – probably it should be “O’Reilly et al. [46]”.

Line 166: “…considerations: First…” – “…consideration. First…”, seems better.

Line 187: “…paper are: Initially…” – “…paper are: initially…”?!

Line 217: “Douyin” – it is a new element (name, mark?) unknown to the reader and not described before. What is this? Explain.

Line 218: “In order to avoid common method bias, this paper uses triangulation to cross-check and complement the collected data to improve the reliability and validity of "theoretical sampling" by means of "triangulation” – review the phrase! Too much “triangulation”.

Line 276: “…on the "pain points" of demand…” – too many expressions in inverted commas. In science you should be more direct and clearer/more precise.

Line 277: “The born of the 15-second short realises the subversion of user needs” – incomprehensible sentence.

Lines 277-279: “In addition, Kuaishou uses the marginal utility theory for product traffic regulation, and forward-looking use of digital technologies, such as big data and cloud computing, which improves the monetization efficiency of short video traffic pools” – give more details how they do it, using marginal utility theory.

Line 288: “…the paradigm model of "causation-action-result"…” – this requires a reference or an explanation!

Line 369: “content ecology” – What does it mean? Explain.

Lines 379-380: “Meanwhile, non-compliant content is strict controls to delivering short videos, which continuously improves product quality” – Who controls what, why and how? “Non-compliant” – what does it mean?

Line 385: “Alibaba” – new unexplained element! Not all readers know what’s going on.

Table 3, p.14: “Bytedance” – review and correct.

Line 491: “Market” – why are you using a capital letter?

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

I enjoyed reading this paper. This paper reports the dynamic capability dimension in the digital context by applying the grounded theory method and divides the evolution process of disruptive innovation into the sprout stage, growth stage, and expansion stage.  

In my opinion, the authors have to put more forward the contribution of the study. Moreover, I think that the author/s have to explain better the methodology and the conclusions of the research.

 

 Therefore, I have formed the view that the merit of the subject and the quality of the research warrants to submit a revised version.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf