{"id":131,"date":"2005-10-21T12:34:20","date_gmt":"2005-10-21T18:34:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/wp\/?p=131"},"modified":"2005-10-21T12:34:20","modified_gmt":"2005-10-21T18:34:20","slug":"ear_waves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=131","title":{"rendered":"Ear waves"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently wrote an essay<\/a>, for Strategy + Business, about disruptive innovations. In addition to the well-known bottom-up model of disruption (documented by Clayton Christensen<\/a>), I argued that there’s a top-down model as well. Bottom-up disruptions initially underperform the existing products in a market (on the purchasing criteria traditionally used by customers), but as their performance improves they move up into the mainstream, displacing the incumbents. Top-down disruptions, in contrast, outperform existing products initially, and then move down into the mainstream as their cost falls.<\/p>\n

One of the examples of a potential top-down disruption I pointed to was satellite radio. It strikes me that you could argue that podcasting now represents a potential bottom-up disruption in the same market. Although I’m sure there are other examples in the past, I can’t immediately think of another instance when we’ve so clearly seen an existing market under threat from bottom-up and top-down disruptions simultaneously. I have no idea how the market will ultimately shake out, but the process should be fascinating, and instructive, to watch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently wrote an essay, for Strategy + Business, about disruptive innovations. In addition to the well-known bottom-up model of disruption (documented by Clayton Christensen), I argued that there’s a top-down model as well. Bottom-up disruptions initially underperform the existing products in a market (on the purchasing criteria traditionally used by customers), but as their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}