http://ctovision.com/2008/06/clayton-christensen-disruptive-innovations-and-enterprise-it/ Context for the enterprise technologist Wed, 16 May 2012 16:27:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 http://ctovision.com/2008/06/clayton-christensen-disruptive-innovations-and-enterprise-it/#comment-150 Bob Gourley Thu, 26 Jun 2008 04:03:18 +0000 http://ctovision.com/?p=56#comment-150 Thanks much Frank for the feedback. That helps. I also got a few e-mails from CTO friends on this topic, and from a totally different source who had not read my post I got a pointer to an intelligence community report just published on "Disruptive Civil Technologies out to 2025" that uses the term more in lines with the way I am. I think I should probably keep using it my way but I should do so in a way that is most respectful to Dr. Christensen's incredibly important work. More later, Bob Thanks much Frank for the feedback. That helps. I also got a few e-mails from CTO friends on this topic, and from a totally different source who had not read my post I got a pointer to an intelligence community report just published on "Disruptive Civil Technologies out to 2025" that uses the term more in lines with the way I am. I think I should probably keep using it my way but I should do so in a way that is most respectful to Dr. Christensen's incredibly important work.
More later,
Bob

]]> http://ctovision.com/2008/06/clayton-christensen-disruptive-innovations-and-enterprise-it/#comment-149 Frank Hecker Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:50:39 +0000 http://ctovision.com/?p=56#comment-149 Re the true meaning of disruptive innovation, note that I like Christensen's original distinction between "new market" disruption (targeted to new customers or new uses by existing customers) and "low cost" disruption (targeted to less demanding and more price-sensitive customers in an existing market). I think this is an important distinction in trying to predict how and where disruption is going to occur. For example, VMware and similar virtualization technologies were IMO new market disruptive innovations: they enabled something that wasn't really possible before (at least in the commodity server market, this of course was an old story in the mainframe context). On the other hand, open source management apps like Nagios, OpenNMS, etc., are low cost disruptive innovations, enabling at least a significant subset of the functionality as traditional proprietary products at lower cost. I think low cost disruptive innovations are a bit easier to see coming because there are clear long term trends driving them (e.g., open source, Moore's law, etc.). New market innovations are often more "how'd they think of that?" in nature. Re the true meaning of disruptive innovation, note that I like Christensen's original distinction between "new market" disruption (targeted to new customers or new uses by existing customers) and "low cost" disruption (targeted to less demanding and more price-sensitive customers in an existing market). I think this is an important distinction in trying to predict how and where disruption is going to occur.
For example, VMware and similar virtualization technologies were IMO new market disruptive innovations: they enabled something that wasn't really possible before (at least in the commodity server market, this of course was an old story in the mainframe context). On the other hand, open source management apps like Nagios, OpenNMS, etc., are low cost disruptive innovations, enabling at least a significant subset of the functionality as traditional proprietary products at lower cost.
I think low cost disruptive innovations are a bit easier to see coming because there are clear long term trends driving them (e.g., open source, Moore's law, etc.). New market innovations are often more "how'd they think of that?" in nature.

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