Disruptive Technologies

Here is a definition of disruptive technologies on the Web:

Some technologies are improved in a linear fashion or incrementally. Others truly change the paradigm. Clayton Christensen writes about these in The Innovator’s Dilemma. What is particularly interesting about Christensen’s analysis (based on data from the disk drive industry) is that he found disruptive technologies tended to be much cheaper than existing technologies. Existing companies were quite capable of developing the technologies (and had). What they couldn’t do was figure out how to market them and whether it made sense to devote sufficient resources to them (which in many cases would not have been the responsible thing to do.) Related term nonlinear. Business of biotechnology glossary.

I came across a rather interesting opinion on the disruptive technologies community in Orkut. Here is what was said :

POLL: Most Interesting Disruptive Technology
“I am going to vote for the open source movement… for the first time ever Microsoft will have to fight against a really disruptive technology that it can’t kill by attacking a single company or product.”