Open Access

Mohammed Khalil, Nanko Boerma

• Rapid and sustained innovation in developed markets triggers the generation of innovative start-ups, some with disruptive innovations. However, when their offering faces a saturated market with satisfactory and widely available established traditional solutions, many innovative start-ups from these markets may fail. The literature on some start-ups that successfully brought their innovation to emerging markets shows how using leapfrogging traditional solutions to innovative solutions can offer survival and growth opportunities to these start-ups. However, a wide exploitation of leapfrogging processes in emerging markets for survival or business growth of innovative start-ups from developed markets is not yet theorized. To contribute to closing this gap, we propose a conceptual framework to assess the readiness of an emerging market to leapfrog to innovative solutions. The design of the conceptual framework uses a scenario-planning like approach with two key factors, namely Context Readiness and Value Network Integration. To test and refine the proposed framework and show its relevance for coming to an informed expansion decision making, we used PAR (Participatory Action Research). For the illustration of the application of the proposed conceptual framework, the case of telehealth in Morocco is used.