Abstract
Many scholars within the innovation management field have investigated for a long time the concept of radical innovation, i.e. of an innovation that significantly changes the state-of-the-art of knowledge and technology in a certain field. In this stream of research, several scholars have focused on the concept of disruptive innovation, i.e. of an innovation that changes the nature of competition in a given industry, bringing new companies to the top ranks and “disrupting” the position of incumbents. However, the characteristics of the context in which the “disruption” takes place are rather under-researched; therefore, the work attempts to examine if the disruptive phenomenon arises from specific context factors, apart from the innovation itself or the innovator firm. In this respect, the paper leverages on Uber as an explorative case study and conducts a longitudinal analysis of secondary sources, which described and studied all the evolutionary phases of the innovation. The context factors analyzed in the paper are the market concentration, the regulatory system and the diversification of the offering in four metropolitan areas in which Uber slipped in. The case study shows that the regulatory system represents the most influential variable on the Uber's capacity to “disrupt” the taxi industry.