Disruptive Technology and Examples of Disruptive Technologies

In 1997 Mr. Clayton M.Christensen ( A Harvard Business School Professor ) introduces a new term “Disruptive Technology”. He also describes that disruptive technology unexpectedly displaces an established technology. He explains later in his best selling book in 1997, “The Innovator’s Dilemma” and separate new technology into two major categories: Sustaining and Disruptive.

Sustaining technology: A technology which relies on incremental improvements to an already established technology is called sustaining technology.

On the other hand the technology Because it is new so lacks refinement,often has performance problems,appeals to a limited audience and may not yet have a proven practical application. The most common example of disruptive technology is “Electrical Speech Machine” later called telephone by Alexander Graham Bell.

Professor Mr. Clayton M.Christensen point out in his book that no. of large corporations are like to work with sustaining technologies and they designed their work accordingly. Large Corporations are staying close to their customers, having a mechanism in place to develop existing technologies, so they excel at knowing their market. Marketing opportunities which are created by the low margin disruptive technologies may cause the capitalizing on the potential efficiencies and cost saving by large corporations.

Professor Mr. Clayton M.Christensen in his book “The Innovator’s Dilemma” ( the best selling book for the year 1997 ) to illustrate his point about disruptive use the real world examples. He demonstrates how it is not unusual for a big corporation to dismiss all the values of a disruptive, the reason is that it does not reinforce on current company goals.