“I don’t feel that this concept of disruptive technology is the solution for everybody. But I think it’s very important for innovators to understand what we’ve learned about established companies’ motivation to target obvious profitable markets – and about their inability to find emerging ones.” – Clayton M Christensen – Author, academic
Clayton M. Christensen, the renowned Harvard Business School professor and author, developed the theory of disruptive innovation, which explains why established companies often fail to capitalize on emerging markets despite their resources and expertise.2,4,5 In the quoted statement, Christensen cautions that disruptive technology is not a universal fix but a critical lesson for innovators: incumbents prioritize obvious profitable markets due to their business models, blinding them to emerging ones that disruptors exploit.1,2,3
Context of the Quote
This insight stems from Christensen’s seminal 1997 book The Innovator’s Dilemma, where he analyzed why leading firms in industries like disk drives collapsed under simpler, cheaper innovations targeting overlooked customer segments.2,5,6 The quote underscores a core tenet: disruption begins at the market’s low end or in new applications—offering less performance on attributes valued by mainstream customers but more accessibility, affordability, and convenience—allowing it to improve rapidly and invade established markets.2,3,4 Christensen emphasized that incumbents’ value networks—their focus on sustaining innovations for high-end customers—create a rational aversion to “unprofitable” opportunities, enabling startups to dominate.2,5 Real-world examples include successive disk-drive sizes (14-inch to 2.5-inch) that upended predecessors between 1975 and 1990.6
Backstory on Clayton M. Christensen
Born in 1952 in Salt Lake City, Utah, Christensen earned a DBA from Harvard Business School in 1992 after studying economics at Brigham Young University and Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.2 His disk-drive research for his dissertation revealed patterns of failure among market leaders, birthing disruptive innovation theory in his 1995 article “Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave” (co-authored with Joseph Bower) and the bestselling The Innovator’s Dilemma.2,8 The theory exploded in popularity, influencing leaders from Silicon Valley to Wall Street, though Christensen later clarified misuses—like labeling every breakthrough as “disruptive.”4,5 He co-founded Innosight consulting firm with Mark W. Johnson and taught at Harvard until his death in 2020 from leukemia, leaving a legacy in books like How Will You Measure Your Life? and applications to education, health care, and marketing (e.g., “Positionless Marketing” democratizing tools for all marketers).1,3,6
Leading Theorists Related to Disruptive Innovation
Christensen built on and influenced key thinkers in innovation and economics. Their ideas form the intellectual foundation for understanding why markets shift unpredictably.
| Theorist | Key Contribution | Relation to Christensen’s Theory |
|---|---|---|
| Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950) | Coined creative destruction in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942): capitalism thrives on innovations destroying old structures.2 | Provided the macroeconomic backdrop; Christensen applied it to firm-level dynamics, showing how disruptors erode incumbents’ dominance. |
| Richard N. Foster | In Innovation: The Attacker’s Advantage (1986), described attackers overtaking defenders via S-curves of technological performance.2 | Prefigured disruption’s trajectory; Christensen formalized it as low-end invasions rather than pure technological superiority. |
| Joseph Bower | Co-authored Christensen’s 1995 HBR article; explored strategic responses to technological threats in earlier papers.2 | Collaborated on early framing, emphasizing managerial processes over tech alone. |
| Mark W. Johnson | Co-founder of Innosight; co-authored HBR’s “Reinventing Your Business Model” (2008), detailing how disruptors commercialize ideas.2 | Extended theory to business model innovation, bridging idea to market invasion. |
These theorists highlight that disruption rejects the “technology mudslide hypothesis”—firms don’t fail from tech lag alone but from misaligned priorities in value networks.2 Christensen differentiated sustaining innovations (incremental improvements for top customers) from disruptors (simple, affordable entries for emerging markets).3,4 His framework remains a predictive tool: only 6% of sustaining entrants succeed standalone, per disk-drive data.5
References
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_innovation
3. https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/an-interview-with-clayton-m-christensen/
4. https://www.christenseninstitute.org/theory/disruptive-innovation/
5. https://hbr.org/2015/12/what-is-disruptive-innovation
6. https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2014/06/disruptive-genius
7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpkoCZ4vBSI
8. https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=46
