This study analyzes the highly disruptive transportation business in Indonesia. This study uses critical qualitative methods with a combination of in-depth interviews with several key stakeholders and analyzing disruptive changes in the transportation business. The findings of this study are that trust, consistency, capital ownership and the closeness of newcomers to incumbents are important in disruptive innovation processes, empirical evidence that transportation in Indonesia has been a definite economic shift.
A commonly discussed concept in digital transformation is the brilliant idea of disruption theory (Christensen, 2015). Based on literature disruption, theoretical analysis tools are provided based on two competing camps in the digital economy, namely new entrants and incumbents (Z. Zhang et al., 2023). A new entrant is a new player that has high innovation and consistently takes on the market role originally owned by the incumbent. Furthermore, incumbents are long-time players who are incapable of digital transformation and are left out of market mechanisms definitively (Kasali, 2017). Business actors who are victims of digital economic transformation are certainly not few and often put forward the same defense, as the Nokia CEO said “We did nothing wrong, but we were eliminated from the market mechanism” (Lamberg et al., 2021).
The relationship between the digital economy and disruption must be discussed considering that changes will always disrupt incumbents who have succeeded before (Margiansyah, 2020). Therefore, the digital transformation process requires a logical-linguistic and deductive approach that works effectively so that management methods are needed in making new decisions (Lepskiy et al., 2018). Another variable that should be taken into account is the macroeconomic state of a country that can consistently adapt to new business model patterns, of course, without a strong macroeconomic condition, a transformation will only be the beginning and then sink over time (Hardt & Neill, 2017).
In-depth interviews that have been conducted show a phenomenon that is more authentic and has not been widely discussed by other academics about the concept of disruption. Of course, disruption does not suddenly occur but shows the initial symptoms of disruption, it is important to observe that early detection of symptoms is a much-needed anticipatory step. Furthermore, the in-depth interview initiated that variable trust is very important, the analogy is as we know that cryptocurrencies are one of the excellent initiations for the development of the digital economy. Cryptocurrency is a technology for the use of blockchain, some of which are digital money, electronic money, or virtual money which are the same currency and this money does not have a physical form (Teichmann & Falker, 2020). The proof of variable trust in disruption is that theoretically, cryptocurrencies disrupt the role of currencies, but not the resilience of the dollar. The dollar still uses conventional methods in the process of transactions carried out. This is one of the contributions of this article, namely the use of trust in a concept that will disrupt other concepts so that its continuity can replace a concept continuously and consistently.
This study looks at the digital economy of business transportation as a form of disruption in Indonesia. This study used qualitative and in-depth interviews with key stakeholders of several public officials in Indonesia while the results of data interpretation were processed based on the grand theory of digital economy and disruption. The empirical strategy shows that disruption occurs not only based on the behavior carried out by new entrants and incumbents, but must consider variable trust so that the disruption that occurs can be continuous and consistent.
The results of the interpretation of the data show that the government has publicly expressed full support for each individual who will develop a business in the digital economy model. The Indonesian government in this case does not limit possible innovations and does not close the space for more up-to-date technology to be applied. Although we will find that there will always be negative externalities of a change that occur, including the behavior of business models that are more individualistic, more egocentric, and profit-oriented. This finding explains that in interpreting a disruptive business model, it must pay attention to the right momentum in its implementation, this encourages the active opening of trust to the disruptive commodity.
Further studies show the need to observe disruption that is not limited to the economic sector, considering that disruption almost occurs not only in business models but is more complex, namely people’s behavior and stigma. Likewise, the community must play an active role in adapting the transformation of disruptive business models, as long as it does not violate the legality of the law, a business model can be applied as a whole. Researchers realize that discussions have limitations in the narrow scope of research locations, subsequent researchers on disruption studies should be expanded through a series of comparative data from different countries.
Author: Prof. Dr. Wasiaturrahma, S.E., M.Si.
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