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Some failures and Performance overcapacity examples in disruptive Technologies:

The disk management division of Hewlett Packard the legendary company was generating about revenues of about 600 million dollars for the parent 20 billion dollar company. in 1991. Some executives of the company developed a tiny 1.3 inch disk drive which had a memory of 20 megabytes (MB). Up to that time the company had made drives of 3.5 inches . Thus the 1.3 inch drive represented a classic case of disruptive technology in the entire company’s history.

The drive was called Kiityhawk.

Headquarters gave them the go ahead provided the revenues for the new drive crossed 150 million dollars in three years. The executives developing the drive had a new market in mind personal digital assistants and hand held palm tops. The small size and limited memory of the drive was ideally suited for these devices. They consulted marker analysts who assured them that indeed the projections could be met.

The executives further went and let the word around that such a drive was available at major computer companies such as Microsoft, Intel, Apple, Motorola and other lesser known start ups. Many of them were developing personal digital assistants big time. They developed their products suited to the kiityhawk drive and the kiityhawk was adjusted to suit customer requirements.

The performance of the kiiyhawk drive improved substantially. The first version had a capacity of 20 MB . However the second version had greater ruggedness which was necessary for PDAS(personal digital assistants)and could store up to 40 mb.

The PDA market however was very slow in taking off and many products such as Apple’s Newton failed to sale up to expectations. As a result the Kiityhawk failed to log the sales which were expected by company headquarters in the first two years. But by the standards of a start-up products they were satisfactory. Also the sales were not in the PDA market at all as was forecasted but...