Disruptive (Technology)
Introduction
Disruptive technology or disruptive innovation is that technology or innovation that leads to the emergence of products and services that preferably use a disruptive strategy (from English disruptive), which produces a sudden upheaval) as opposed to a sustainable strategy in order to compete against a dominant technology, seeking progressive consolidation in a market.[1] Although initially the term comes from economics, it is currently beginning to have a lot of importance when proposing development strategies in the R&D departments of many companies. Although not necessarily so. Disruptive must be linked to technology, for example in a certain sector a business model from another sector can be applied, generating a disruption, without necessarily using a new technology.
The term "disruptive technology" was coined by Clayton M. Christensen and presented in 1995 with his article Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave, co-authored with Joseph Bower. He described the term further in his book The Innovator's Dilemma, published in 1997, with the term "disruptive innovation", because some technologies are inherently disruptive or sustainable in their own right.
In general, disruptive technologies can be classified as low-end technologies and new market technologies. A new-market innovation is usually launched towards the so-called non-consumer markets, where customers begin to use a product or service that they did not use before (e.g. GPS systems), or thanks to the accessibility that the new technology provides to users who did not have access to a product (development of chain production in the automobile industry) or the decentralization of the location of a service (e.g. fixed telephony versus mobile telephony).
Disruptive technological innovations are initially low-performance and are aimed at less demanding consumers with lower purchasing power[1]. These users are less profitable for companies established in a certain market, being ignored in the innovation of new, more expensive products. This is due to the need for growth and increased profits of established companies from their products, and that generates internal trends towards the development of products with higher features, aimed at the most demanding consumers, but that provide higher margins. Disruptive technology is progressively improved and gradually occupies the niches that the established technology is giving up, and sometimes manages to gain the largest share of the market and displace the established one. An example would be the beginnings of digital photography, with much less resolution, but with a great reduction in the development costs associated with traditional photography or a business model that makes a product affordable to a large number of people with lower purchasing power (such as Zara clothing stores) or simply the use of a product that did not exist before, such as the invention of the Post-it by 3M[1].