Study 3: Lessons from Tata: How Leadership Can Drive Disruptive Innovations

The Tata Swach case study helps unravel the role a senior leader plays in commercializing disruptive innovations from within the boundaries of an established firm. While disruptive innovation literature talks about how CEOs and top leaders have played a critical role in helping the company respond to disruptive innovations successfully, it is relatively silent on exactly what role the leader assumes. This chapter will take a deeper look into the process of development and commercialization of the Tata Swach. It will focus on the role played by the leadership in the innovation process. This longitudinal study will also lend a perspective to understanding ambidexterity over time. Structural ambidexterity is achieved by differentiating exploitation and exploration units, yet enabling cross-fertilization between them through integration mechanisms. However, few studies have looked at these mechanisms as they evolve over time. With this perspective, this study aims to deepen understanding by taking a process view of ambidexterity and exploring how mechanisms of differentiation and integration unfold over a period of time. The first part of the chapter sets the theoretical foundation of leadership and ambidexterity. This is embedded in the classical innovation management literature of the individual roles in the innovation process. The next section, presents the gap in literature and the research question this chapter focuses on. The empirical section that follows presents the case study and gives an overview of the Tata Swach project and other projects at Tata. Subsequently, the analysis section presents the findings from the case study, followed by concluding remarks.