{"id":44,"date":"2005-05-24T16:30:47","date_gmt":"2005-05-24T22:30:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/wp\/?p=44"},"modified":"2005-05-24T16:30:47","modified_gmt":"2005-05-24T22:30:47","slug":"disruption_from","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=44","title":{"rendered":"Disruption from above"},"content":{"rendered":"

As anyone who\u2019s read my work knows, I\u2019ve been influenced by the writings of Clayton Christensen, particularly his description of how the performance of technology products can advance beyond the needs of customers. In his book The Innovator\u2019s Dilemma<\/a>, Christensen describes how this \u201covershooting\u201d phenomenon opens the door to \u201cdisruptive innovations\u201d \u2013 cheap and initially inferior products that take hold at the bottom of a market and then rise to displace the dominant technology.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a brilliant insight into the workings of technology markets, but I\u2019ve become convinced that Christensen\u2019s view of disruptive innovations is too narrow. In addition to the bottom-up variety of disruptions that he portrays, there are also many examples of what I call \u201ctop-down disruptions\u201d \u2013 products that initially appeal to an elite segment of a market but then shift downward into the mainstream, ultimately changing all customers’ buying behavior. I describe my idea in more detail in an article<\/a> in the Summer 2005 issue of Strategy + Business, which has just been released. Among the examples of top-down disruptions that I examine are overnight package delivery, satellite radio, and Apple\u2019s iPod.<\/p>\n

So if you\u2019re seeking to instigate a disruption, or simply to protect yourself from one, you should always look up as well as down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clayton Christensen has brilliantly described how disruptive innovations often take hold at the bottom of a market. But disruptions can begin at the top as well.<\/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-44","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\/44","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=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}