Disruptive vs. sustaining technologies: a 20-year veteran of product development shares some thoughts on when to refine or abandon an existing technology for something new.(Manager's Forum)

With advances in technology, it seems obvious that companies should always launch new products. In fact, the entire start-up industry is based on the notion of launching the next disruptive innovation. But is this always the case? When is it better to continue to refine an existing technology, and when is it better to abandon the current solution and look for something new?

Innovation

Disruptive innovation, first championed by Clayton Christensen, basically spells out a set of requirements necessary for a new technology to displace existing products. In his work, he looked at two main areas for disruption: new technology/new market and low-end entry.

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In the first case, competition is against nonconsumption. A simple example is the now ubiquitous cell phone where, before its introduction, alternatives such as CB radios were vastly inferior.

In the second case, competition comes from a new value proposition that delivers a product at an entirely different cost structure. An often-cited example is the introduction of an inkjet printer as a lower cost substitute for a laser printer.

These introduction models stand in contrast to sustaining technology advancements. For instance, eking out more capacity from a hard drive or adding a color screen to a mobile phone simply adds functionality to an existing product. Generally speaking, disruptive innovations favor new entrants while sustaining technologies benefit incumbents.

Within these broad categories, additional refinement is needed to help assess the likely success of a technology development and introduction effort. For instance, the adoption of fiber-optic communications links provides an interesting example of the balance between disruptive and sustaining technologies. …

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