Creating an international market for disruptive innovations

Although the significance of international markets is recognised in innovation management, there seems to be a lack of studies on how the international context is actually present in the process of disruptive‐innovation development. This paper aims at filling this gap and at analysing the manifestation of the international context in market proactiveness during this process. It begins with a brief discussion of the concepts of market proactiveness and disruptive innovations. The international scope of market proactiveness at the idea‐generation, development, and launch stages is then analysed in the light of the ethnocentric, polycentric, regiocentric, geocentric (EPRG) model, and described in the context of the development of three disruptive drugs. The results of this study indicate that both the degree and international scope of market proactiveness differ considerably in demand‐related and competition‐related comparisons.