Startups innovativeness is in the spotlight of the media due to their ability to alter social regimes across industries. Prior innovation has devoted particular attention to them, leveraging the advancement of other interdisciplinary fields, and emphasising a clear connection between innovation and business strategies realisation. Prior literature addressing the effects of disruptive innovation on competition dynamics have disproportionately focused on big firms. This gap constituted a starting point for focusing on the startups side and deliver a contribution transforming into the modelling (and testing) of a defensiveness referential framework (DRF) accounting defensive classification (PAPEH matrix) and innovation-responsiveness (boomerang model). A case research design is intertwined with archival data from four databases allowed the creation of a contrived dataset for testing the defensiveness phenomenon on 179 tech-startups, and further empirical validation by data triangulation with external secondary sources. Results unveiled a tendency of startups to implement either a pure entrepreneurial model or a hybrid defensiveness model. Fundamental differences were also encountered between the traditional tech-startups of the Lisbon Hub and digital Big Bang disruptors (DBBD).

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Big Bang disruption,BBD,Boomerang model,Digital innovation,Defensive strategies,Industry-response cycle,Innovation response cycle,IRC,Lisbon ecosystem,PAPEH matrix,Startups

• Economics and Business - Social Sciences