Disruptive technology was first introduced in Clayton Christensen article Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave (1995) which was co-wrote with Joseph Bower. [1] In view of business and technology fields, as discussed by Clayton Christensen, disruptive technology is a technology initially in a form of simple application, then improves and dominates dramatically in the markets, where the markets do not expect. Disruptive technology typically improves in a way that by being lower priced and designed for various disciplines of consumers. [2] Instead of allowing consumers with lots of money or lots of skills to use it, disruptive technology is designed in which allow “whole new population of consumers” to use it, access its services. [3]

For leaders of the existing markets, disruptive technology makes potential threats on them. It is because it competes with the existing leaders of the market in such an unexpected trend. Leaders of the existing markets sometimes fail to compete with disruptive technology since they do not expect disruptive technology can improve and dominate dramatically in the markets. Generally, disruptive technology dominates the existing markets by moving into a new market where the older technology fails to follow. In additional, it enhances and makes improvements in its performance until finally displace the market incumbents. [2]

There are lots of examples of disruptive technology such as personal computers, digital memory cards, digital photography, and Liquid Crystal Displays (LCD). Personal computers displaced the original mainframes computers. The dominant of digital memory cards has displaced the floppy disks which were widely used in the past. [4]

Endnotes:

[1] Bower, Joseph L. & Christensen, Clayton M. (1995). “Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave” Harvard Business Review, January-February 1995

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/, Wikipedia, Disruptive Technology (accessed on 6 January 2010)

[3] http://www.claytonchristensen.com (accessed on 6 January 2010)

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/, Wikipedia, Examples of disruptive innovations (accessed on 6 January 2010)

What is sustainable technology? How does it differ from disruptive technology? (1/2 to one page)

Sustainable technology improves established products performance without replacing them. Sustainable technology is usually developed by well-established company which usually holds a leadership position in the corresponding industries. Generally, most of the new technologies and innovations improve the performance of products. The term sustainable technology was introduced by Clayton Christensen in 2003:

“What all sustaining technologies have in c