... in the traditional (christensen) sense I mean. My example in the earlier post had been countered by thiyagi. So I'm investigating it further.
To use christensen's three tests for disruptiveness:
1. Does the innovation target customers who in the past haven’t been able to “do it themselves” for lack of money or skills?
- in a top-down disruption I guess it is not the lack of money or skills which matter, but the fact that the market is so niche/high-end that it is ignored by incumbents.
2. Is the innovation aimed at customers who will welcome a simpler product?
- in a top-down disruption, is it a simpler product we are looking at? It is a product targeted at specific needs. I'm not sure whether the "simple" description would apply here. IPod - simple ?
3. Will the innovation help customers do more easily and effectively what they are already trying to do?
- maybe the top-down disruption does follow this test.
So, I'm not sure that the top-down disruption that Nicholas Carr postulates follows the traditional disruption tests of Christensen. Christensen, for one, was only looking at one form of disruption - the bottom-up type; maybe the tests don't encompass a top-down one ??
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Actually there is been quite debate on disruptive innovation, since it sounds cool everybody wants to use that term.
A colleague of mine was at ISB and he had a course called High Tech Marketing taken by Prof Ashwath Sahai ( from LSB now has moved to IIM-A ) and he tells that according to according to his prof so far in the history nothing has been disruptive in true sense except that Linux has the potential to become disruptive.
Well you see so many different views about it exists. I did not understand the litmus tests well myself.
Well I understand disruptive innovation as targeting 'non - consumption' by changing feature set and creating a market where none exists. ( That aligns with the literal meaning of disruptive too)
Moreover whatever Carr says maybe read through properly , I am not saying that he totally bullshits but you have to seperate the chaff in his writing. He writes just to kick some dust storm and gain some fame in the process, remember the article that he published in 2003 "IT does'nt matter".
Anyone who knows basic econ & strat course knows that he was smoking dope for most of the time when he was writing that article.
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