Disruptive Innovation

Abstract Disruptive innovation, in its original sense, refers to a technology that has the potential to disrupt traditional value creation models and markets. It can be contrasted with sustaining innovation that mainly improves or evolves existing value creation models and markets. Over time, the term “disruptive innovation,” popularized by Clayton Christensen in the 1990s, has left its original focus on technological innovations and has been widely used to describe almost every type of innovation from radically new products, processes, and services to discontinuous business models, change processes, and value propositions. This broad use of the term undermines the usefulness of a powerful concept of disruptive technologies and their strategic impact on organizations and markets.