Is the distinction between them valid?
First lets look at what each technology is.
Disruptive Technology
"Disruptive technologies are usually those innovations that initially do not improve the focus of the company. Disruptive technologies often don't have a market when they're created. A market must be developed and often it's made up of new customers that the established companies in that field haven't been called on to serve (often 'down-market' from their current customers--smaller computers, smaller numbers, etc). The initial benefits of the disruptive technologies are not features that their current customers are calling for. For example, small, light-weight hard drives with less capacity and a higher cost per megabyte of storage are not appealing to desktop computer users. They don't care about weight because they don't move their machines. They want storage and price. Laptop computer users, however, highly value lightweight storage and are willing to buy disk drives with less capacity if they make significant gains in size and weight. What makes small disk drives a disruptive technology is that they begin to improve in capacity and cost until they reach the same or better price points and storage capabilities as the larger drives. Now desktop customers also want lightweight, high-capacity hard drives and they go to the new companies, leaving their old suppliers scrambling to adopt the new technology." (Deb, 2003)
"Sustaining technologies are those technologies or improvements that sustain an organization's focus, goals, and customers. Sustaining technologies allow an organization to do their job better, to improve their products and to increase customer satisfaction. In addition, sustaining technologies provide obvious improvements in the things that current customers want. In an example that Christensen uses in his book, desktop computer users want disk drives with more capacity at the same or lower cost. A sustaining technology would be a new technique or production method or disk drive that delivered increased storage capacity for desktop computer users.
Sustaining technologies can be radical. For example, a method of manufacturing more cardboard boxes per hour might involve completely different equipment for the operation. What it doesn't involve, though, is a change of focus or a creating a new market." (Deb, 2003)
Now lets have a look at some examples:
Disruptive Technology
The telephone.
The computer.
The internet.
Sustaining Technology
The modern washing machine which now uses less water and power than the first original washing machine.
Any technology which has been improved on
In general, "old" products based on sustaining technology are perceived to be superior to the 'new" ones based on disruptive technology.
Conclusion
It would be fair to think that all technology must have started out as a disruptive technology as they had to be something absolutely new and disruptive to begin with.
I admit I am finding it hard to see the distinction between sustaining and disruptive technology. I wrote this blog entry as a way of making me research the topic further and maybe coming away with a clear understanding on it but I am finding the line between very blurred.
Deb (October 3rd, 2003). Tech, Knowledge, and Community. retrieved August 22nd, 2012 from http://www.extension.iastate.edu/mt/dcoates/archives/000606.html
No comments:
Post a Comment