Disruptive technologies catching the wave

This article coined the phrase Disruptive Innovation. It introduces the reasons behind why disruption can happen - mainly the new technologies are not good enough for an incumbents current large user base - so they ignore it. However, new technology improves at a much faster rate than the needs of the incumbents customers, so eventually the new technology (which has several advantages over the current) is good enough. The problem is it could be too late for an incumbent as others have already developed this new technology and taken customers away.

The irony is the incumbent focused its efforts on its customers (a good thing) - and ended up being disrupted.

The pressures on incumbents to maintain profit margins with large customer bases mean they are not setup to look for and develop disruptive technologies, which start out with low margins and small customer bases.

Asking your current user base about the use of a disruptive technology will not yield any results as they are not yet good enough for them. Another mistake is waiting for disruptive technologies to be as good as or better than current ones. Disruptive entrants only need to be as good as the market needs and no more - so they may always lag behind other technologies.

When a disruptive technology arises, a small business unit separate from the main organisation needs to be created, than can celebrate small wins and is not tied to the financial performance of the larger organisation.