Disruptive Innovation

Also called Disruption

Clayton Christensen's idea: a smaller entrant with a simpler, cheaper offering serves overlooked customers, then improves until it displaces established leaders who ignored it.

Why it matters

Disruption explains how startups beat incumbents who seem unassailable, by starting where the giants do not care to compete. Understanding it helps founders find the underserved foothold from which to grow up-market.

For example

Netflix started with mail-order DVDs for underserved customers, then improved into streaming and displaced the video-rental incumbents who ignored it.

Worth your time

What Is Disruptive Innovation? Harvard Business Review · article Christensen reclaiming his own term from misuse, the precise definition of disruption and why most things called disruptive are not. Open hbr.org →

Related terms

Go deeper

See how founders actually handle this on Growing and marketing, part of the Starting Up hub.

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