Disruptive technologyClayton M. Christensen to describe a new, low cost, often simpler technology that displaces an existing sustaining technology.
Disruptive technologies are usually initially inferior to the technology that they displace, but their low cost creates a market that induces technological and economic network effects that provide the incentive to enhance them to match and surpass the previous technology.
|Disruptive Technology||Displaced Technology|
|Printing press||Manuscripts, Scriptorium>Scriptoria|
|digital cameras||photographic film|
|mass-market cellular telephony||fixed-line telephony|
|voice over IP||analog and fixed digital telephone systems|
|Internet Protocol suite||proprietary or fixed-configuration [network]]s|
|EIDE/UDMA hard drives||SCSI hard drives|
|open-source software||proprietary software|
|add more examples here...||add more examples here...|
Not all technologies promoted as disruptive technologies have actually prospered as well as their proponents had hoped. However, some of these technologies have only been around for a few years, and their ultimate fate has not yet been determined.
Unresolved examples of technologies promoted as 'disruptive technologies'
- Music downloads and file sharing vs. compact discs
- ebooks vs. paper books
- e-commerce vs. physical shops