Shereen Amos is Managing Director of Sugarbird Studios, a strategic creative and research agency that mobilises collaborative action through conferences, research documentaries, engagement platforms, and immersive concept experiences. Her work led her to pursue an MPhil in Inclusive Innovation (UCT) and doctoral research on multi-actor innovation in complex systems.
She defended her Doctorate of Business Administration (DBA) in October 2025 with her thesis “From Disruptive Innovation to Meta-Innovation: Reconceptualising and Directing Innovation at Scale, under the supervision of Professor Emmanuel Josserand, professor at EMLV – Léonard de Vinci School of Management, France. This thesis introduces a framework for orchestrating innovation across technological, social, and environmental boundaries to address interconnected grand challenges.
Thesis Direction
Prof Mothe Caroline, Prof Josserand Emmanuel
Thesis Title
From disruptive innovation to meta-innovation: reconceptualising and directing innovation at scale
Abstract
This dissertation investigates the evolution of disruptive innovation theory in contemporary contexts characterised by unprecedented technological change, environmental urgency, and social transformation. Since its introduction by Bower and Christensen (1995), disruptive innovation theory has profoundly shaped how scholars, practitioners, and policymakers understand transformative innovation dynamics and competitive change. However, as innovation increasingly unfolds through complex collaborative arrangements rather than isolated firm actions, the original conceptualisation faces significant explanatory limitations.
Despite disruptive innovation’s enduring influence, the contexts in which innovation unfolds today bear little resemblance to those that shaped the original theory. Digital technologies have blurred industry boundaries and enabled ecosystem and platform-based business models. Environmental imperatives have created demands for solutions that preserve and regenerate natural and socio-technical systems. While scholars have progressively expanded disruptive innovation theory to address these changes, this expansion has occurred without a cohesive theoretical framework, creating a significant gap between established theory and contemporary innovation phenomena.
This dissertation, through three papers, develops a more comprehensive understanding of disruptive innovation by investigating how the concept has been reconceptualised for contemporary contexts, how disruptive innovation manifests through different configurations with distinctive characteristics, and how entrepreneurs intentionally direct disruptive innovation ecosystem emergence through specific practices. The research employs mixed-methods across these three papers: bibliometric analysis and systematic review to trace disruptive innovation’s evolution, theoretical analysis to develop a configurational framework, and qualitative process research through a longitudinal case study of Regen Farmers Mutual to identify entrepreneurial practices in ecosystem development.
The research reveals how disruptive innovation has expanded from a firm-centric competitive phenomenon to a multi-dimensional force for ecosystem and societal transformation. It identifies three distinct configurations – enterprise-led, innovation ecosystem, and socio-technical system – through which disruptive innovation manifests in different contexts. Through the process model of ecosystem work it also illuminates seven micro-practices contributing to six directing processes that entrepreneurs deploy to direct disruptive innovation ecosystem emergence across developmental stages.
From further synthesis of these three papers emerges a new theoretical construct, meta-innovation, which represents a fundamental reconceptualisation of how innovation processes themselves can be transformed to address complex challenges that span multiple domains simultaneously. This emergent construct is precisely defined through necessary and sufficient conditions that distinguish it from adjacent innovation concepts, with a practical framework for implementation. The meta-innovation concept and praxis offer both theoretical advancement and practical guidance for addressing complex interconnected challenges. Future research could productively examine meta-innovation across diverse contexts, investigate the capabilities and leadership approaches it requires, explore the evolution of governance arrangements, and develop more nuanced approaches to evaluation and impact assessment.
For organisational leaders and entrepreneurs, this dissertation provides practical frameworks for navigating increasingly complex innovation landscapes, enabling strategic decisions about which innovation pattern best suits specific challenges and contexts. For investors and funders, it challenges conventional investment logics by revealing the non-linear development trajectory of contemporary innovation. For policy makers, it highlights how policy approaches need to evolve to support innovation at scale, developing new metrics that capture ecosystem-level impacts and multi-dimensional value creation.