theory

Clayton Christensen was an amazing observer of business, and his work on disruption is seminal. But has he been proven wrong in the last 10 years on many major disruptions? What if the bottom-up cheaper product disrupting the market is a phenomenon limited to commoditized old product categories (think tires and clothes)? The Christensen theory of disruption could be called “inferior disruption theory” — inferior, cheaper, good enough products that disrupt incumbents over time. While this clearly happens, there’s a more powerful model for disruption.