Rfid as Disruptive Innovation

DiruptiveJournal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research ISSN 0718–1876 Electronic Version VOL 3 / ISSUE 2 / AUGUST 2008 / 44-59 © 2008 Universidad de Talca - Chile

This paper is available online at www.jtaer.com

RFID as a Disruptive Innovation

Vlad Krotov1 and Iris Junglas2

University of Houston, Bauer College of Business 1 vokrotov@uh.edu,2 ijunglas@uh.edu

Received 26 July 2007; received in revised form 31 January 2008; accepted 14 April 2008

Abstract

The first part of the paper discusses Wal-Mart’s adoption of RFID through the theoretical lens of the Resources, Processes, and Values (RPV) innovation theory. This part makes a theoretical argument that WalMart adopted RFID as a sustaining innovation – an incremental improvement in supply chain identification technology. The second part reviews a representative sample of IS literature in order to investigate whether IS researchers have been influenced by Wal-Mart’s perspective on RFID. The literature review suggests that many IS researchers have also adopted Wal-Mart’s perspective on RFID. The third part argues that RFID technology has a potential to become a disruptive technology with a profound impact on business and society. Given this possibility, both researchers and practitioners are provided with two frameworks (“object oriented approach” and “visionary approach”) which can help them to adopt a more forward-looking perspective in relation to RFID. The object oriented approach starts from the basic capabilities offered by RFID technology and attempts to determine how these capabilities can be used to create a new RFID application. The visionary approach starts by assuming that RFID technology has reached its peak in terms of breadth of adoption and then tries to determine opportunities offered in this situation.

Key words: RFID, Future, Innovation, Resources, Processes, Values, Sustaining, Disruptive, New business models, New value propositions, Information superhighway

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