Disruptive innovation (DI) poses a significant challenge for firms due to their uncertain nature and unique diffusion patterns before entering the market. A proactive strategy to address the issue of DI can turn a potential disruption into a business opportunity. To implement such an aggressive approach, firms should enhance their intrapreneurship capabilities through middle managers’ disruptive innovation activities (DIA). However, research on managing and promoting DI by middle managers is still at a nascent stage. Therefore, this study aims to fill this gap in the literature by examining the influence of a firm’s customer orientation (i.e., mainstream and emerging) and middle managers’ mastery achievement goals on their DIA. It analyses the direct and interaction effects of firms’ customer orientation and middle managers’ achievement goals on their DIA. The data from 337 middle managers are analyzed in structural equation modelling. The results indicate that managers’ perception regarding their firm as ‘emerging customer orientated’ positively influences their DIA. Perception regarding the firm as ‘mainstream customer orientated’ negatively influences. Mastery achievement goals of middle managers positively impact their DIA. The interaction of emerging customer orientation and mastery achievement goals significantly influence middle managers’ DIA. Later, interviews were conducted to elaborate on the survey data results, which complemented the findings and provided further insight into the identified effects. These results provide a comprehensive understanding of middle managers' strategic role in nurturing DI in an organizational setting and contributing to the theory and practice.

颠覆性创新（DI）对公司构成了重大挑战，因为它们的不确定性和进入市场之前的独特扩散模式。主动解决DI问题的策略可以将潜在的干扰转化为商机。为了实施这种积极进取的方法，公司应通过中层管理人员的破坏性创新活动（DIA）来增强企业内创业能力。但是，关于中层管理者如何管理和促进直接投资的研究仍处于起步阶段。因此，本研究旨在通过检查公司的客户导向（即主流和新兴）和中层管理者的精通成就目标对其DIA的影响来填补文献中的空白。它分析了公司的客户导向和中层管理人员的成就目标对他们的DIA的直接和交互作用。在结构方程模型中分析了来自337位中层管理人员的数据。结果表明，经理对他们公司“以客户为导向”的看法对他们的DIA产生了积极的影响。将公司视为“以主流客户为导向”的看法会产生负面影响。中层管理人员的精通成就目标对他们的DIA有积极影响。新兴的客户导向与精通成就目标之间的相互作用极大地影响了中层经理的DIA。后来，进行了访谈以详细说明调查数据的结果，对调查结果进行了补充，并提供了对已确定影响的进一步见解。