Disruptive technology
The term disruptive technology was coined by Clayton M. Christensen to describe a new, low cost, often simpler technology that displaces an existing sustaining technology.Disruptive technologies are usually initially inferior to the technology that they displace, but their low cost creates a market that induces technological and economic network effects that provide the incentive to enhance them to match and surpass the previous technology.
| Disruptive Technology | Displaced Technology |
|---|---|
| Printing press | Manuscripts, Scriptorium>Scriptoria |
| railways | canals |
| the automobile | railways |
| digital cameras | photographic film |
| mass-market cellular telephony | fixed-line telephony |
| voice over IP | analog and fixed digital telephone systems |
| ADSL | ISDN |
| Internet Protocol suite | proprietary or fixed-configuration [network]]s |
| EIDE/UDMA hard drives | SCSI hard drives |
| minicomputers | mainframe computers |
| personal computers | minicomputers |
| open-source software | proprietary software |
| add more examples here... | add more examples here... |
Not all technologies promoted as disruptive technologies have actually prospered as well as their proponents had hoped. However, some of these technologies have only been around for a few years, and their ultimate fate has not yet been determined.
Unresolved examples of technologies promoted as 'disruptive technologies'
- Music downloads and file sharing vs. compact discs
- ebooks vs. paper books
- e-commerce vs. physical shops
- Betamax
- Laserdiscs
- Cold fusion
- Japanese fifth generation computer systems project
- Virtual reality
- PDAss
- 3G
- add more examples here