4 Business Ideas That Changed the World: Disruptive Innovation

In the 1980s, Clayton Christensen cofounded a startup that took
over a market niche from DuPont and Alcoa. That experience left
Christensen puzzled. How could a small company with few resources
beat rich incumbents? It led to his theory of disruptive
innovation, introduced in the pages of Harvard Business Review in
1995 and popularized two years later in The Innovators Dilemma. The
idea has inspired a generation of entrepreneurs. It has reshaped
R&D strategies at countless established firms. And it has
changed how investors place billions of dollars and how governments
spend billions more, aiming to kickstart new industries and spark
economic growth. But disruption has taken on a popular meaning well
beyond what Christensen’s research describes. Some critics argue
that the theory lacks evidence. Others say it glosses over the
social costs of lost jobs of bankrupted companies. And debate
continues over the best way to apply the idea in practice. 4
Business Ideas That Changed the World is a special series from HBR
IdeaCast. Each week, an HBR editor talks to world-class scholars
and experts on the most influential ideas of HBR’s first 100 years,
such as shareholder value, scientific management, and emotional
intelligence. Discussing disruptive innovation with HBR editor Amy
Bernstein are: Rita McGrath, professor at Columbia Business School
Felix Oberholzer-Gee, professor at Harvard Business School Derek
van Bever, senior lecturer at Harvard Business School Further
reading: HBR: What Is Disruptive Innovation?, by Clayton M.
Christensen, Michael E. Raynor, and Rory McDonald New Yorker: The
Disruption Machine: What the Gospel of Innovation Gets Wrong, by
Jill Lepore Business History Review: How History Shaped the
Innovator’s Dilemma, by Tom Nicholas HBR: Disruptive Technologies:
Catching the Wave, by Joseph L. Bower and Clayton M. Christensen