{"id":431,"date":"2024-12-17T01:35:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-17T01:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hyperhq.com\/?post_type=insight&p=431"},"modified":"2025-06-20T13:52:52","modified_gmt":"2025-06-20T03:52:52","slug":"tech-mythbusting-2-on-disruptive-innovation","status":"publish","type":"insight","link":"https:\/\/hyperhq.com\/insights\/tech-mythbusting-2-on-disruptive-innovation\/","title":{"rendered":"Tech Mythbusting #2: On Disruptive Innovation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Concepts that foster change, upend the status quo and give new life to industries, are always discussed and disputed to seemingly no end. And that\u2019s to be expected, considering that The Economist<\/a> lists at least six conventional industries that have been eviscerated by digital innovation in the past two decades: music, video-rending, books, taxis, newspapers and clothes retailing.<\/p>\n

Whenever change menaces the status quo, there\u2019ll be those that want to keep things exactly the way they are. Furthermore, in an entrepreneurial world where everyone\u2019s racing to build the next big thing, the one thing that will reshape the industry, a lot of people and companies will dilute \u201cbig concepts\u201d to fit their purposes. Which is exactly what\u2019s happened to disruption in recent years.<\/p>\n

So what is disruption?<\/strong> Hailed by entrepreneurs all over the world as the single greatest means to reshape industries and economies, disruptive innovation has come to mean many different things to different people. Clayton M. Christensen, the Harvard professor that first conceptualised the idea, described it as a \u201ctechnologically simple innovation in the form of a product, service, or business model that takes root in a tier of the market that is unattractive to the established leaders in an industry.\u201d Seems straightforward enough. However, even this somewhat generalised description has had its fair share of disputes. Especially as technology and entrepreneurial models evolved.<\/p>\n

The primary attributes disruptive innovation is universally associated with are:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 the innovative business model<\/p>\n

\u2022 the innovative product or service and its efficiency<\/p>\n

\u2022 the product\/service\u2019s low cost<\/p>\n

\u2022 and the all-important potential they have as whole to completely upend the market and replace it with something better and\/or (depending on who you ask) completely different.<\/p>\n

It should be pretty clear by now that all of these attributes will undeniably lead to different visions in different people and fields. Some argue that only business models<\/a> can be disruptive, while others, including Christensen himself, say that products or services can be disruptive as well. Some argue that the innovation should be technologically simple, while others believe it can be complex. Most experts believe disruptive products and services should offer cheaper alternatives to what\u2019s on the market, while others believe that they can be more expensive than the ones they\u2019re disrupting.<\/p>\n

Mix and match all of these and the end result, the disruptive \u201ccombo\u201d, is even harder to assess than its separate parts. To top it all off, many economy and tech journalists are now arguing that disruption is merely a buzzword<\/strong> that should be retired altogether<\/a>, that disruption is an invalid myth or that it\u2019s a cliche.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Uber is the best example of how different perspectives can completely alter how we see \u201cdisruptiveness\u201d.<\/strong> While the biggest entrepreneurship-focused publications often hail the ride-sharing app as the most disruptive business of our time (fighting for the top spot with Airbnb, of course), Clayton Christensen has deemed it unworthy of the title<\/a>. He says that while Uber is innovative, it\u2019s not disruptive: it\u2019s merely an improvement over the regular old taxi. After his remarks, TechCrunch chimed in with its own take on both Uber\u2019s business model and Christensen\u2019s comments, noting that Christensen is wrong, as the company is claiming bigger and bigger shares of the taxi industry.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re probably getting bored or even annoyed by now, which is exactly the type of reaction a lot of experts are having as well. Why bother calling this or that disruptive or not if no one can agree on anything? Why bother ever using the term again? After all, disruptive innovation has existed since, well, economy existed, so why go through the trouble of suddenly classifying businesses so?<\/p>\n

The answer is inspiration.<\/strong> Or ambition. Or inventiveness, or drive<\/strong>, or any other word that denotes some actionable way of going about business. As long as there\u2019s a golden standard that everyone, including the haters, can\u2019t help but compare themselves to, companies will keep pushing for more innovation, for better products, for models that will make people\u2019s lives easier than before. After all, Netflix, Spotify, Amazon\u2019s Kindle or Uber may or may not be disruptive, but it\u2019s certainly changed how we see the on-demand video, music, books or transportation industries and how we go about our daily lives.<\/p>\n

So aim for disruptive innovation, no matter what that means to you.<\/strong> Whether people call them relevant, myths or empty buzzwords, use every available \u201cbig concept\u201d to force yourself to think out of the box and strive for innovation. That\u2019s how successful businesses are made, and that\u2019s how we evolve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Concepts that foster change, upend the status quo and give new life to industries, are always discussed and disputed to seemingly no end. And that\u2019s to be expected, considering that The Economist lists at least six conventional industries that have been eviscerated by digital innovation in the past two decades: music, video-rending, books, taxis, newspapers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":453,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-431","insight","type-insight","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hyperhq.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/insight\/431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hyperhq.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/insight"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hyperhq.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/insight"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hyperhq.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hyperhq.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hyperhq.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hyperhq.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hyperhq.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}