Clayton Christensen is the author of the celebrated book The Innovator’s Dilemma (1997), where he explains why companies fail rather than succeed—his theory is that the threats from competitors’ cheap, low-quality offerings are underestimated and companies react only when it is too late. Disruptive innovation is his term; think of how the iPad literally changed the game for children’s interactive entertainment and ate Nintendo’s lunch—to take a recent example.
Netopia likes to follow the blog Mr. Tea Cup, which recently applied Christensen’s theory to Silicon Valley start-ups, arguing that they overuse these thoughts and that just because a tech is disruptive does not necessarily mean it’s good or helpful. If you only read one more blog post today, read this!
