Big Bang Disruption

A new kind of innovator

can wipe out incumbents

in a flash, by Larry Dowries

and Paul F. Nunes

HBR.ORG

THE BIG IDEA BIG-BANG DISRUPTION

y now any well-read executive knows the basic

playbook for saving a

business from disruptive

innovation. Nearly two

decades of management

1 research, beginning with

¡Joseph L. Bower and

Clayton M. Christensen's

1995 HBR article, "Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave," have

taught businesses to be on the lookout for upstarts

that offer cheap substitutes to their products, capture new, low-end customers, and then gradually

move upmarket to pick off higher-end customers,

too. When these disrupters appear, we've learned,

it's time to act quickly—either acquiring them or incubating a competing business that embraces their

new technology.

But the strategic model of disruptive innovation

we've all become comfortable with has a blind spot.

It assumes that disrupters start with a lower-priced,

inferior alternative that chips away at the least profitable segments, giving an incumbent business time

to start a skunkworks and develop its own nextgeneration products.

That advice hasn't been much help to navigationproduct makers like TomTom, Garmin, and Magellan. Free navigation apps, now preloaded on every

smartphone, are not only cheaper but better than

the stand-alone devices those companies sell. And

thanks to the robust platform provided by the iOS

and Android operating systems, navigation apps are

constantly improving, with new versions distributed

automatically through the cloud.

The disruption here hasn't come from competitors in the same industry or even from companies

with a remotely similar business model. Nor did

the new technology enter at the bottom of a mature

market and then follow a carefully planned march

through larger customer segments. Users made the

switch in a matter of weeks. And it wasn't just the

least profitable or "underserved" customers who

were lured away....