A critical debate on disruptive innovation and deindustrialization: Understanding disruption and change

The aim of my thesis is to carry out an analysis of the theory of disruptive innovation and offer some critical perspectives on the deindustrialization studies. Economists, management theorists and practitioners have highlighted the potential benefits of disruptions to foster innovation and growth. On the other hand, sociologists, scholars and researchers have focused instead on the consequences of such disruptions, in the form of economic restructurings, that particularly in the last decades brought about significant economic and social costs. What thus emerges is a complex and multidimensional framework. Notwithstanding, while the two literatures appear to have only rarely intertwined, fundamentally they provide an approach to the same issue, from two distinctive but eventually tied points of view. A comparative study on the American steel industry is then discussed, as an historical example that has been analyzed from both perspectives.