Let’s walk through how Clayton Christensen defined
sustaining innovation versus
disruptive
innovation so that you can really understand the
idea and apply it to your own challenges.
Sustaining
innovation
is simply an
improvement to an existing
product or service. This is
where you make your good
products
better for your most
sophisticated and demanding
customers. This is where big
companies tend to focus because
they find their best
profits. And this is what
actually creates space for new
entrants and
disruptors.
②
Low-End Disruption
Low-end disruption is when businesses come in at
the bottom of the market with a “good enough”
product at a cheaper cost. This is
disruptive innovation where a smaller
company with fewer resources moves upmarket and,
ultimately, captures the incumbents’
customers,
who have adopted it into the mainstream.
This is market-making disruption. New-market
disruption is when businesses create a new
segment in an existing market to reach
underserved customers. These businesses
basically turn products and services that were
once expensive and unattainable into something
affordable and accessible to a larger population
of people.
