Technology of rupture

A technology of rupture is a technological Innovation which relates to a product or a service and which ends up replacing a dominant technology on a market. This disappearance of existing technology will be made well that the technology of rupture is radically different and that it is often less powerful in the beginning according to the traditional criteria of measurement. A technology of rupture occurs and dominates an already existing market is by fulfilling a function which traditional technology could not fill for a particular application (as it was the case of the small diskettes initially more expensive and reduced capacity developed for the laptops) or by increasing the market shares gradually as the performances increase, until replacing those which were established on the market (as it was the case with numeric photography).

In opposition to the technologies of rupture , technologies of continuity or continuous improvement proceed by successive gradual increments of the performances of technology that holding them of the market realize for their products.

The term of “technology of rupture” ( Disrupting technology in English) was introduced and argued by Clayton Mr. Christensen in a book published in 1997 The innovator' S Dilemma . In the continuation of this work The innovator' S solution Christensen uses the generic term of innovation of rupture because he recognizes that few technologies are intrinsically of rupture or continuity. It is on the contrary their strategic use which has an effect of rupture.

The theory

Christensen distinguishes between on the one hand the lower rupture which aims at the customers who do not need all the performances of the higher market and on the other hand the rupture of new markets which is addressed to the customers who until now were not been useful by the established companies.

The lower rupture occurs when the rate/rhythm to which the products improve exceeds the rate/rhythm to which the customers can learn and adopt the new performance. Thus, as from a certain moment the performances of the product will exceed the needs for certain segments of the customers. From there a technology of rupture can arrive on the market and offer products which have performances lower than the products containing traditional technology but which are sufficient to satisfy certain customers. Thus new technology penetrates on the market.

The company in rupture naturally will try to improve its margins which are first of all limited because bearing on products of convenience. Thus, it will innovate to satisfy the higher segments of the customers. The established companies will not engage of price war against a simpler product and with less production costs, they thus will concentrate on the most demanding segments of customers and gravitational. Gradually the traditional companies will see their market shares being reduced and when the technology of rupture is capable to satisfy the most demanding segments of the market traditional technology will disappear.

The ruptures of market intervene as for them when a product which is lower according to traditional measurements of the performance but is appropriate for an emerging segment of the market or a new market. In the industry of the diskettes of storage for example, the new generations of diskettes, smaller, were more expensive and of capacity less than the existing diskettes. As the size was not a big factor for the first generations of computers these new disk drives seemed less better under all the aspects. But with the development of the personal computers and the laptops the size became an important criterion and these readers dominated the market quickly.

All technologies of rupture do not have less performances. There are many cases where technology is higher than existing technology and yet is not adopted by the key actors of the market. That occurs when important capital is invested in traditional technology. To change, an existing actor must not only invest in new technology but also replace his existing infrastructures (the costs of dismantling can be important). He can be more interesting to amortize the investments already carried out while technology declines. The new actors are not confronted with such a choice.

Some examples of ruptures to the high performances:

the development of the maritime transport by containers and the development of the port of Oakland in California while the wearing of San Francisco was not modernized.
the mini-steel-works

Examples of technologies of rupture

All technologies of rupture did not evolve/move as their promoters hoped for it. However some of these technologies have been available only for a few years and their ultimate destiny is not yet visible.

Examples of these “technologies of rupture” in becoming can be found among:

the Remote loading of music and the file sharing against the Compact disk
the E-book against the delivers
the E-trade against the physical stores.
free software against the software owners (like Linux against Microsoft Windows, although Linux already largely replaced Unix)
it with the request on Internet and television diffused by high banc Internet against hertzian television and by cable.
the voice on IP against the traditional telephone and the mobile phone.
portable readers of mp3 against the portable readers of cassettes and CD

Consequences for the businesses

Technologies of ruptures do not seem such with the consumers and it is necessary a really important time so that they are presented in the form of such to the other industrialists. This is why they are difficult to identify initially. Indeed, as underlines it Christensen it is completely normal that the established companies are unaware of initially technologies of rupture because they do not make the weight compared to traditional technologies and their markets are marginal by reports/ratios at the principal markets. And even when they are recognized as such the existing companies balk to adopt them because they enter in competition with traditional technologies which function and which are advantageous. It " cannibalisent" their activities. Christensen recommends to the companies established to supervise the development of these technologies, to invest in small companies which exploit them and to continue to maintain their heart target of kind so that the performances remain higher than it with what the technology of rupture can claim.

References

Christensen, Clayton Mr. (1997) The Innovator' S Dilemma , Harvard School Business Near. ISBN 0875845851
Christensen, Clayton Mr.; Raynor, Michael E. (2003) The Innovator' S Solution , Harvard School Business Near. ISBN 1578518520
Constantinos C. Markides, Paul A. Gerosk (2004) Fast Second: How Smart Companies Radical Bypass Innovation to Enter and Dominate New Markets , Jossey-Bass
Tushman, M.L. & Anderson, P. (1986). Technological Discontinuities and Organizational Environments. Administrative Science Quarterly 31:439 - 465.

See too

Innovation, Technology, Strategy

External bonds

Innosight, review founded by Clayton Christensen

Random links: