In business theory, disruptive innovation is innovation that creates a new market and value

network or enters at the bottom of an existing market and eventually displaces established
market-leading firms, products, and alliances.[2] The concept was developed by the American
academic Clayton Christensen and his collaborators beginning in 1995,[3] and has been called the
most influential business idea of the early 21st century.[4] Lingfei Wu, Dashun Wang, and James
A. Evans generalized this term to identify disruptive science and technological advances from
more than 65 million papers, patents and software products that span the period 1954–2014.
Their work was featured as the cover of the February 2019 issue of Nature [5] and was selected
as the Altmetric 100 most-discussed work in 2019.[6]
Not all innovations are disruptive, even if they are revolutionary. For example, the
first automobiles in the late 19th century were not a disruptive innovation, because early
automobiles were expensive luxury items that did not disrupt the market for horse-drawn
vehicles. The market for transportation essentially remained intact until the debut of the lower-
priced Ford Model T in 1908.[7] The mass-produced automobile was a disruptive innovation,
because it changed the transportation market, whereas the first thirty years of automobiles did
not.
Disruptive innovations tend to be produced by outsiders and entrepreneurs in startups, rather
than existing market-leading companies. The business environment of market leaders does not
allow them to pursue disruptive innovations when they first arise, because they are not profitable
enough at first and because their development can take scarce resources away from sustaining
innovations (which are needed to compete against current competition).[8] Small teams are more
likely to create disruptive innovations than large teams.[5] A disruptive process can take longer to
develop than by the conventional approach and the risk associated to it is higher than the other
more incremental, architectural or evolutionary forms of innovations, but once it is deployed in
the market, it achieves a much faster penetration and higher degree of impact on the established
markets.[9]
Beyond business and economics disruptive innovations can also be considered to
disrupt complex systems, including economic and business-related aspects.[10] Through
identifying and analyzing systems for possible points of intervention, one can then design
changes focused on disruptive interventions.[11]

Contents

 1History and usage of the term

o 1.1What is (isn't) disruptive innovation
 2Theory
 3Disruptive technology
 4High-technology effects
 5Internal auditor response
 6A proactive approach to disruptive innovation
 7Example of disruption
 8Examples
 9Potential opportunities
 10Potential threats
 11See also
 12Notes
 13References
 14Further reading
 15External links

History and usage of the term[edit]

The term disruptive technologies was coined by Clayton M. Christensen and introduced in his
1995 article Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave,[12] which he cowrote with Joseph
Bower. The article is aimed at both management executives who make the funding or purchasing
decisions in companies, as well as the research community, which is largely responsible for
introducing the disruptive vector to the consumer market. He describes the term further in his
book The Innovator's Dilemma.[13] Innovator's Dilemma explored the case of the disk drive
industry (the disk drive and memory industry, with its rapid technological evolution, is to the study
of technology what fruit flies are to the study of genetics, as Christensen was told in the 1990s[14])
and the excavating and Earth-moving industry (where hydraulic actuation slowly, yet eventually,
displaced cable-actuated machinery). In his sequel with Michael E. Raynor, The Innovator's
Solution,[15] Christensen replaced the term disruptive technology with disruptive
innovation because he recognized that most technologies are not intrinsically disruptive or
sustaining in character; rather, it is the business model that identifies the crucial idea that
potentiates profound market success and subsequently serves as the disruptive vector.
However, comprehending Christensen's business model, which takes the disruptive vector from
the idea borne from the mind of the innovator to a marketable product, is central to
understanding how novel technology facilitates the rapid destruction of established technologies
and markets by the disruptor. Christensen and Mark W. Johnson, who cofounded the
management consulting firm Innosight, described the dynamics of "business model innovation" in
the 2008 Harvard Business Review article "Reinventing Your Business Model".[16] The concept of
disruptive technology continues a long tradition of identifying radical technological change in the
study of innovation by economists, and its implementation and execution by its management at a
corporate or policy level.
According to Christensen, "the term 'disruptive innovation' is misleading when it is used to refer
to the derivative, or 'instantaneous value', of the market behavior of the product or service, rather
than the integral, or 'sum over histories', of the product's market behavior."[17]
In the late 1990s, the automotive sector began to embrace a perspective of "constructive
disruptive technology" by working with the consultant David E. O'Ryan, whereby the use of
current off-the-shelf technology was integrated with newer innovation to create what he called
"an unfair advantage". The process or technology change as a whole had to be "constructive" in
improving the current method of manufacturing, yet disruptively impact the whole of the business
case model, resulting in a significant reduction of waste, energy, materials, labor, or legacy costs
to the user.
In keeping with the insight that a persuasive advertising campaign can be just as effective as
technological sophistication at bringing a successful product to market, Christensen's theory
explains why many disruptive innovations are not advanced or useful technologies, which a
default hypothesis would lead one to expect. Rather, they are often combinations of existing off-
the-shelf components, applied shrewdly to a small, fledgling value network.
Online news site TechRepublic proposes an end using the term, and similar related terms,
suggesting that, as of 2014, it is overused jargon.[18]

What is (isn't) disruptive innovation[edit]

 Disruption is a process, not a product or service, that occurs from the nascent to the
mainstream
 Originate in low-end (less demanding customers) or new market (where none existed)
footholds
 New firms don't catch on with mainstream customers until quality catches up with their
standards
 Success is not a requirement and some business can be disruptive but fail
 New firm's business model differs significantly from incumbent[17]
Christensen continues to develop and refine the theory and has accepted that not all examples
of disruptive innovation perfectly fit into his theory. For example, he conceded that originating in
the low end of the market is not always a cause of disruptive innovation, but rather it fosters
competitive business models, using Uber as an example. In an interview with Forbes magazine
he stated:
"Uber helped me realize that it isn’t that being at the bottom of the market is the causal
mechanism, but that it’s correlated with a business model that is unattractive to its competitor".[19]

Theory[edit]
The current theoretical understanding of disruptive innovation is different from what might be
expected by default, an idea that Clayton M. Christensen called the "technology mudslide
hypothesis". This is the simplistic idea that an established firm fails because it doesn't "keep up
technologically" with other firms. In this hypothesis, firms are like climbers scrambling upward on
crumbling footing, where it takes constant upward-climbing effort just to stay still, and any break
from the effort (such as complacency born of profitability) causes a rapid downhill slide.
Christensen and colleagues have shown that this simplistic hypothesis is wrong; it doesn't model
reality. What they have shown is that good firms are usually aware of the innovations, but their
business environment does not allow them to pursue them when they first arise, because they
are not profitable enough at first and because their development can take scarce resources away
from that of sustaining innovations (which are needed to compete against current competition). In
Christensen's terms, a firm's existing value networks place insufficient value on the disruptive
innovation to allow its pursuit by that firm. Meanwhile, start-up firms inhabit different value
networks, at least until the day that their disruptive innovation is able to invade the older value
network. At that time, the established firm in that network can at best only fend off the market
share attack with a me-too entry, for which survival (not thriving) is the only reward.[8]
In the technology mudslide hypothesis, Christensen differentiated disruptive innovation
from sustaining innovation. He explained that the latter's goal is to improve existing product
performance.[20] On the other hand, he defines a disruptive innovation as a product or service
designed for a new set of customers.
Generally, disruptive innovations were technologically straightforward, consisting of off-the-shelf
components put together in a product architecture that was often simpler than prior approaches.
They offered less of what customers in established markets wanted and so could rarely be
initially employed there. They offered a different package of attributes valued only in emerging
markets remote from, and unimportant to, the mainstream.[21]
Christensen also noted that products considered as disruptive innovations tend to skip stages in
the traditional product design and development process to quickly gain market traction
and competitive advantage.[22] He argued that disruptive innovations can hurt successful, well-
managed companies that are responsive to their customers and have excellent research and
development. These companies tend to ignore the markets most susceptible to disruptive
innovations, because the markets have very tight profit margins and are too small to provide a
good growth rate to an established (sizable) firm.[23] Thus, disruptive technology provides an
example of an instance when the common business-world advice to "focus on the customer" (or
"stay close to the customer", or "listen to the customer") can be strategically counterproductive.
While Christensen argued that disruptive innovations can hurt successful, well-managed
companies, O'Ryan countered that "constructive" integration of existing, new, and forward-
thinking innovation could improve the economic benefits of these same well-managed
companies, once decision-making management understood the systemic benefits as a whole.
How low-end disruption occurs over time.[clarification needed]

Christensen distinguishes between "low-end disruption", which targets customers who do not
need the full performance valued by customers at the high end of the market, and "new-market
disruption", which targets customers who have needs that were previously unserved by existing
incumbents.[24]
"Low-end disruption" occurs when the rate at which products improve exceeds the rate at which
customers can adopt the new performance. Therefore, at some point the performance of the
product overshoots the needs of certain customer segments. At this point, a disruptive
technology may enter the market and provide a product that has lower performance than the
incumbent but that exceeds the requirements of certain segments, thereby gaining a foothold in
the market.
In low-end disruption, the disruptor is focused initially on serving the least profitable customer,
who is happy with a good enough product. This type of customer is not willing to pay premium for
enhancements in product functionality. Once the disruptor has gained a foothold in this customer
segment, it seeks to improve its profit margin. To get higher profit margins, the disruptor needs to
enter the segment where the customer is willing to pay a little more for higher quality. To ensure
this quality in its product, the disruptor needs to innovate. The incumbent will not do much to
retain its share in a not-so-profitable segment, and will move up-market and focus on its more
attractive customers. After a number of such encounters, the incumbent is squeezed into smaller
markets than it was previously serving. And then, finally, the disruptive technology meets the
demands of the most profitable segment and drives the established company out of the market.
"New market disruption" occurs when a product fits a new or emerging market segment that is
not being served by existing incumbents in the industry. Some scholars note that the creation of
a new market is a defining feature of disruptive innovation, particularly in the way it tend to
improve products or services differently in comparison to normal market drivers.[25] It initially
caters to a niche market and proceeds on defining the industry over time once it is able to
penetrate the market or induce consumers to defect from the existing market into the new market
it created.[25]

The extrapolation of the theory to all aspects of life has been challenged,[26][27] as has the
methodology of relying on selected case studies as the principal form of evidence.[26] Jill
Lepore points out that some companies identified by the theory as victims of disruption a decade
or more ago, rather than being defunct, remain dominant in their industries today
(including Seagate Technology, U.S. Steel, and Bucyrus).[26] Lepore questions whether the theory
has been oversold and misapplied, as if it were able to explain everything in every sphere of life,
including not just business but education and public institutions.[26]

Disruptive technology[edit]
In 2009, Milan Zeleny described high technology as disruptive technology and raised the
question of what is being disrupted. The answer, according to Zeleny, is the support network of
high technology.[28] For example, introducing electric cars disrupts the support network for
gasoline cars (network of gas and service stations). Such disruption is fully expected and
therefore effectively resisted by support net owners. In the long run, high (disruptive) technology
bypasses, upgrades, or replaces the outdated support network. Questioning the concept of a
disruptive technology, Haxell (2012) questions how such technologies get named and framed,
pointing out that this is a positioned and retrospective act.[29][30]
Technology, being a form of social relationship,[citation needed] always evolves. No technology remains
fixed. Technology starts, develops, persists, mutates, stagnates, and declines, just like
living organisms.[31] The evolutionary life cycle occurs in the use and development of any
technology. A new high-technology core emerges and challenges existing technology support
nets (TSNs), which are thus forced to coevolve with it. New versions of the core are designed
and fitted into an increasingly appropriate TSN, with smaller and smaller high-technology effects.
High technology becomes regular technology, with more efficient versions fitting the same
support net. Finally, even the efficiency gains diminish, emphasis shifts to product tertiary
attributes (appearance, style), and technology becomes TSN-preserving appropriate technology.
This technological equilibrium state becomes established and fixated, resisting being interrupted
by a technological mutation; then new high technology appears and the cycle is repeated.
Regarding this evolving process of technology, Christensen said:
The technological changes that damage established companies are usually not radically new or
difficult from a technological point of view. They do, however, have two important characteristics:
First, they typically present a different package of performance attributes—ones that, at least at
the outset, are not valued by existing customers. Second, the performance attributes that existing
customers do value improve at such a rapid rate that the new technology can later invade those
established markets.[32]
The World Bank's 2019 World Development Report on The Changing Nature of
Work[33] examines how technology shapes the relative demand for certain skills in labor markets
and expands the reach of firms - robotics and digital technologies, for example, enable firms to
automate, replacing labor with machines to become more efficient, and innovate, expanding the
number of tasks and products. Joseph Bower[34] explained the process of how disruptive
technology, through its requisite support net, dramatically transforms a certain industry.
When the technology that has the potential for revolutionizing an industry emerges, established
companies typically see it as unattractive: it’s not something their mainstream customers want,
and its projected profit margins aren’t sufficient to cover big-company cost structure. As a result,
the new technology tends to get ignored in favor of what’s currently popular with the best
customers. But then another company steps in to bring the innovation to a new market. Once the
disruptive technology becomes established there, smaller-scale innovation rapidly raise the
technology’s performance on attributes that mainstream customers’ value.[35]
For example, the automobile was high technology with respect to the horse carriage; however, it
evolved into technology and finally into appropriate technology with a stable, unchanging TSN.
The main high-technology advance in the offing is some form of electric car—whether the energy
source is the sun, hydrogen, water, air pressure, or traditional charging outlet. Electric cars
preceded the gasoline automobile by many decades and are now returning to replace the
traditional gasoline automobile. The printing press was a development that changed the way that
information was stored, transmitted, and replicated. This allowed empowered authors but it also
promoted censorship and information overload in writing technology.
Milan Zeleny described the above phenomenon.[36] He also wrote that:
Implementing high technology is often resisted. This resistance is well understood on the part of
active participants in the requisite TSN. The electric car will be resisted by gas-station operators
in the same way automated teller machines (ATMs) were resisted by bank tellers and
automobiles by horsewhip makers. Technology does not qualitatively restructure the TSN and
therefore will not be resisted and never has been resisted. Middle management resists business
process reengineering because BPR represents a direct assault on the support net (coordinative
hierarchy) they thrive on. Teamwork and multi-functionality is resisted by those whose TSN
provides the comfort of narrow specialization and command-driven work.[37]
Social media could be considered a disruptive innovation within sports. More specifically, the way
that news in sports circulates nowadays versus the pre-internet era where sports news was
mainly on T.V., radio, and newspapers. Social media has created a new market for sports that
was not around before in the sense that players and fans have instant access to information
related to sports.

High-technology effects[edit]
High technology is a technology core that changes the very architecture (structure and
organization) of the components of the technology support net. High technology therefore
transforms the qualitative nature of the TSN's tasks and their relations, as well as their requisite
physical, energy, and information flows. It also affects the skills required, the roles played, and
the styles of management and coordination—the organizational culture itself.
This kind of technology core is different from regular technology core, which preserves the
qualitative nature of flows and the structure of the support and only allows users to perform the
same tasks in the same way, but faster, more reliably, in larger quantities, or more efficiently. It is
also different from appropriate technology core, which preserves the TSN itself with the purpose
of technology implementation and allows users to do the same thing in the same way at
comparable levels of efficiency, instead of improving the efficiency of performance.[38]
As for the difference between high technology and low technology, Milan Zeleny once said:
The effects of high technology always breaks the direct comparability by changing the system
itself, therefore requiring new measures and new assessments of its productivity. High
technology cannot be compared and evaluated with the existing technology purely on the basis
of cost, net present value or return on investment. Only within an unchanging and relatively
stable TSN would such direct financial comparability be meaningful. For example, you can
directly compare a manual typewriter with an electric typewriter, but not a typewriter with a word
processor. Therein lies the management challenge of high technology.[39]
However, not all modern technologies are high technologies. They have to be used as such,
function as such, and be embedded in their requisite TSNs. They have to empower the individual
because only through the individual can they empower knowledge. Not all information
technologies have integrative effects. Some information systems are still designed to improve the
traditional hierarchy of command and thus preserve and entrench the existing TSN. The
administrative model of management, for instance, further aggravates the division of task and
labor, further specializes knowledge, separates management from workers, and concentrates
information and knowledge in centers.
As knowledge surpasses capital, labor, and raw materials as the dominant economic resource,
technologies are also starting to reflect this shift. Technologies are rapidly shifting from
centralized hierarchies to distributed networks. Nowadays knowledge does not reside in a super-
mind, super-book, or super-database, but in a complex relational pattern of networks brought
forth to coordinate human action.

Internal auditor response[edit]

Internal audit plays a critical role maintaining effective control mitigating emerging risks.
Businesses will increase risk or bypass opportunity if auditors do not address disruption-related
risks.[40] Alles has discussed that Big Data is a disruptive innovation that auditors must incorporate
in practice.[41] A 2019 study, Internal Auditors' Response to Disruptive Innovation, reports on the
evolution of internal audit to react to changes. Disruptions examined include data analytics, agile
processes, cloud computing, robotic process automation, continuous auditing, regulatory change,
and artificial intelligence.[42]

A proactive approach to disruptive innovation[edit]

A proactive approach to addressing the challenge posited by disruptive innovations has been
debated by scholars.[43][44][45] Petzold criticized the lack of acknowledgment of underlying process of
the change to study the disruptive innovation over time from a process view and complexify the
concept to support the understanding of its unfolding and advance its manageability. Keeping in
view the multidimensional nature of disruptive innovation a measurement framework has been
developed by Guo to enable a systemic assessment of disruptive potential of innovations,
providing insights for the decisions in product/service launch and resource allocation. Middle
managers play an important role in long term sustainability of any firm and thus have been
studied to have a proactive role in exploitation of the disruptive innovation process.[46][47]

Example of disruption[edit]
In the practical world, the popularization of personal computers illustrates how knowledge
contributes to the ongoing technology innovation. The original centralized concept (one
computer, many persons) is a knowledge-defying idea of the prehistory of computing, and its
inadequacies and failures have become clearly apparent. The era of personal computing brought
powerful computers "on every desk" (one person, one computer). This short transitional period
was necessary for getting used to the new computing environment, but was inadequate from the
vantage point of producing knowledge. Adequate knowledge creation and management come
mainly from networking and distributed computing (one person, many computers). Each person's
computer must form an access point to the entire computing landscape or ecology through the
Internet of other computers, databases, and mainframes, as well as production, distribution, and
retailing facilities, and the like. For the first time, technology empowers individuals rather than
external hierarchies. It transfers influence and power where it optimally belongs: at the loci of the
useful knowledge. Even though hierarchies and bureaucracies do not innovate, free and
empowered individuals do; knowledge, innovation, spontaneity, and self-reliance are becoming
increasingly valued and promoted.[48]
Amazon Alexa, Airbnb are some other examples of disruption.
Uber is not an example of disruption because it did not originate in a low-end or new market
footholds.[17] One of the conditions for the business to be considered disruptive according
to Clayton M. Christensen is that the business should originate on a) low-end or b) new-market
footholds. Instead, Uber was launched in San Francisco, a large urban city with an established
taxi service and did not target low-end customers or created a new market (from the consumer
perspective). In contrast, UberSELECT, an option that provides luxurious cars such as limousine
at a discounted price, is an example of disruption innovation because it originates from low-end
customers segment - customers who would not have entered the traditional luxurious market.

Examples[edit]
This section needs additional citations for verification. Please
help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources.
Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March
2010) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Disruptive Market disrupted by

Category Notes
innovation innovation
Academia Wikipedia Traditional encyclopedias Traditional, for-profit
general encyclopedias
with articles written by
paid experts have been
displaced by Wikipedia,
an online encyclopedia
which is written and
edited by volunteer
editors. Former market
leader Encyclopædia
Britannica ended its print
production after 244
years in 2012.
[49]
Britannica's price of
over $1000, its physical
size of dozens of hard-
bound volumes, its
weight of over 100
pounds (45 kg), its
number of articles (about
120,000) and its update
cycles lasting a year or
longer made it unable to
compete with Wikipedia,
which provides free,
online access to over 6
million articles with most
of them updated more
frequently.

Wikipedia not only

disrupted printed paper
encyclopedias; it also
disrupted digital
encyclopedias.
Microsoft's Encarta, a
1993 entry into
professionally edited
digital encyclopedias,
was once a major rival
to Britannica but was
discontinued in 2009.
[50]
Wikipedia's free
access, online
accessibility on
computers
and smartphones,
unlimited size and instant
updates are some of the
challenges faced by for-
profit competition in the
encyclopedia market.

Communicatio Telephony Telegraphy When Western

n Union declined to
purchase Alexander
 Graham Bell's telephone
patents for $100,000,
their highest-profit market
was long-distance
telegraphy. Telephones
were only useful at that
time for very local calls.
Short-distance telegraphy
barely existed as a
market segment, which
explains Western Union's
decision to not enter the
emerging telephone
market. However,
telephones quickly
displaced telegraphs, as
telephones offered much
greater communication
capacity than telegraphs.
FM Radio AM Radio
Computer hard Minicomputers Mainframes Minicomputers were
ware originally presented as an
inexpensive alternative to
mainframes and
mainframe manufacturers
did not consider them a
serious threat in their
market. Eventually, the
market for minicomputers
(led by Seymor Cray—
daisy chaining his
minisupercomputers)
became much larger than
the market for
mainframes.
Personal Minicomputers, workstatio Personal computers
computers ns, word processors, Lisp combined all functions
machines into one device.
Pocket 3.5 standard calculator[1] Equivalent computing
calculator performance and
portable[13]
Digital Mechanical calculator Facit AB used to
calculator dominate the European
market for calculators,
but did not adapt digital
technology, and failed to
compete with digital
competitors.[51]
Mobile Phones Car Phones and MP3 The inherent portability of
players mobile phones and
eventual Bluetooth integr
ation into cars and mobile
phones rendered the
need for a separate car
 phone moot. A similar
situation occurred once
mobile phones gained
the ability to play and
store a significant amount
of MP3 files.
Smartphones All prior types of Smartphones were both
rudimentary mobile a revolutionary (in the
phones and PDAs mobile phone industry)
and disruptive innovation
(displacing PDAs) as
they were: generally
more capable than earlier
types of mobile phones,
introduced and
popularized entirely new
services/markets that
were exclusive to
smartphones, had a
secondary function as a
PDA, and could leverage
existing cellular data
services and increased
computing power to
connect to and use the
internet to a greater
extent than that of a
typical PDA (which were
usually reliant on Wi-
Fi and retained limited
computing power).
Data storage 8 inch floppy 14 inch hard disk drive The floppy disk drive
disk drive market has had unusually
large changes in market
5.25 inch floppy 8 inch floppy disk drive
share over the past fifty
disk drive
years. According to
3.5 inch floppy 5.25 inch floppy disk drive Clayton M. Christensen's
disk drive research, the cause of
Optical Bernoulli drive and Zip this instability was a
discs and USB drive repeating pattern of
flash drives disruptive innovations.
[52]
For example, in 1981,
the old 8 inch drives
(used in mini computers)
were "vastly superior" to
the new 5.25 inch drives
(used in desktop
computers).[21]
However, 8 inch drives
were not affordable for
the new desktop
machines. The simple
5.25 inch drive,
assembled from
technologically inferior
 "off-the-shelf" components,
[21]
was an "innovation" only
in the sense that it was
new. However, as this
market grew and the drives
improved, the companies
Display Light-emitting Light bulbs A LED is significantly
diodes smaller and less power-
consuming than a light
bulb. The first optical
LEDs were weak, and
only useful as indicator
lights. Later models could
be used for indoor
lighting, and now several
cities are switching
to LED street lights.
Incandescent light bulbs
are being phased out in
many countries. LED
displays and AMOLED ar
e also becoming
competitive with LCDs.
LCD LED CRT The first liquid crystal
displays displays (LCD) were
monochromatic and had
low resolution. They were
used in watches and
other handheld devices,
but during the early
2000s these (and other
planar technologies)
largely replaced the
dominant cathode ray
tube (CRT) technology
for computer displays
and television sets.
CRT sets were very
heavy, and the size and
weight of the tube limited
the maximum screen size
to about 38 inches; in
contrast, LCD and other
flat-panel TVs are
available in 40", 50", 60"
and even bigger sizes, all
of which weigh much less
than a CRT set. CRT
technologies did improve
 in the late 1990s with
advances like true-flat
panels and digital
controls; however, these
updates were not enough
to prevent CRTs from
being displaced by flat-
panel LCD displays.

Electronics Transistor Vacuum tube Vacuum tubes were the

dominant electronic
technology up until the
1950s. The
first transistor was
invented by Bell Labs in
1947, but was initially
overlooked
by radio companies such
as RCA up until the mid-
1950s,
when Sony successfully
commercialized the
technology with the
pocket transistor radio,
leading to transistors
replacing vacuum tubes
as the dominant
electronic technology by
the late 1950s.[53]
Silicon Germanium Up until the late 1950s,
germanium was the
dominant semiconductor
material
for semiconductor
devices, as it was
capable of the highest
performance up until
then.[54][55] In the late
1950s, Mohamed M.
Atalla developed the
process of silicon surface
passivation by thermal
oxidation at Bell Labs.[56][57]
[55]
This enabled silicon to
surpass the conductivity
and performance of
germanium, and led to
silicon replacing
germanium as the
dominant semiconductor
material, paving the way
for the silicon revolution.
[55][58][59]

MOSFET Bipolar junction transistor The bipolar junction

transistor (BJT) was the
 dominant semiconductor
device up until the 1960s.
[60][61]
In 1959, Mohamed
M. Atalla and Dawon
Kahng invented
the metal-oxide-
semiconductor field-effect
transistor (MOSFET, or
MOS transistor) at Bell
Labs, and demonstrated
it in 1960.[62] However, it
was initially overlooked
and ignored by Bell Labs
in favour of BJTs.[63] In the
1970s, the MOSFET
eventually replaced the
BJT as the dominant
semiconductor
technology.[60] As of 2018,
the MOSFET is the most
widely manufactured
device in history.[61]
Manufacturing Hydraulic excav Cable-operated Hydraulic excavators
ators excavators were clearly innovative at
the time of introduction
but they gained
widespread use only
decades after. However,
cable-operated
excavators are still used
in some cases, mainly for
large excavations.[64]
Mini steel mills Vertically integrated steel By using mostly locally
mills available scrap and
power sources these
mills can be cost effective
even though not large.[65]
Plastic Metal, wood, glass etc. Bakelite and other early
plastics had very limited
use - their main
advantages were electric
insulation and low cost.
New forms of plastic had
advantages such as
transparency, elasticity
and combustibility. In the
early 21st century,
plastics can be used for
many household items
previously made of metal,
wood and glass.
Music and vide Digital Electronic organ, electric Synthesizers were
o synthesizer piano and piano initially low-cost, low-
weight alternatives to
electronic organs, electric
 pianos and acoustic
pianos. In the 2010s,
synthesizers are
significantly cheaper than
electric pianos and
acoustic pianos, all while
offering a much greater
range of sound effects
and musical sounds.[citation
needed]

Gramophone Pianola
Downloadable CDs, DVDs In the 1990s, the music
Digital media industry phased out the
vinyl record single,
leaving consumers with
no means to purchase
individual songs. This
market was initially filled
by illegal peer-to-peer file
sharing technologies, and
then by online retailers
such as the iTunes
Store and Amazon.com.
This low end disruption
eventually undermined
the sales of physical,
high-cost recordings such
as records, tapes and
CDs.[66]

Streaming video Video rental Video on

demand software can run
on many Internet-enabled
devices. Since licensing
deals between film
studios and streaming
providers have become
standard, this has
obviated the need for
people to seek rentals at
physically separate
locations. Netflix, a
dominant company in this
market, was cited as a
significant threat to video
stores when it first
expanded beyond DVD
by mail offerings. The
Netflix co-founders
approached rental
chain Blockbuster LLC in
2000 trying to sell their
company. Blockbuster
declined and ultimately
ceased operation ten
 years later.[67]
Photography Digital Chemical photography Early digital cameras
photography suffered from low picture
quality and resolution and
long shutter lag. Quality
and resolution are no
longer major issues in the
2010s and shutter lag
issues have been largely
resolved. The
convenience of small
memory cards and
portable hard drives that
hold hundreds or
thousands of pictures, as
well as the lack of the
need to develop these
pictures, also helped
make digital cameras the
market leader. Digital
cameras have a high
power consumption (but
several lightweight
battery packs can provide
enough power for
thousands of pictures).
Cameras for classic
photography are stand-
alone devices. In the
same manner, high-
resolution digital
video recording has
replaced film stock,
except for high-budget
motion pictures and fine
art.[citation needed] The rise of
digital cameras
led Eastman Kodak, one
of the largest camera
companies for decades,
to declare bankruptcy in
2012. Despite inventing
one of the first digital
cameras in 1975, Kodak
remained invested in
traditional film until much
later.[68][69]

High Photographic film When first introduced,

speed CMOS high speed CMOS
image sensors sensors were less
sensitive, had lower
resolution, and cameras
based on them had less
duration (record time).
The advantage of rapid
 setup time, editing in the
camera, and nearly-
instantaneous review
quickly eliminated 16 mm
high speed film
systems. CMOS-based di
gital cameras also
require less power (single
phase 110 V AC and a
few amps for high-
performance CMOS,
direct current 5V or 3.3V
and two or three amps for
low-power CMOS,[70] vs.
240 V single- or three-
phase at 20-50 A for film
cameras). Continuing
advances have overtaken
35 mm film and are
challenging 70 mm film
applications.[citation needed]
Publishing Computer Offset printing Offset printing has a
printers high overhead cost, but
very low unit
cost compared to
computer printers, and
superior quality. But as
printers, especially laser
printers, have improved
in speed and quality, they
have become
increasingly useful for
creating documents in
limited issues.[citation needed]
Desktop Traditional publishing Early desktop-publishing
publishing systems could not match
high-end professional
systems in either features
or quality, but their
impact was felt
immediately as they
lowered the cost of entry
to the publishing
business. By the mid-
1990s, DTP had largely
replaced traditional tools
in most prepress
operations.[citation needed]
Word Typewriter The typewriter has been
Processing replaced with word
processing software that
has a wealth of
functionality to stylize,
copy and facilitate
document production.
Transportation Steamboats Sailing ships The first steamships were
deployed on inland
waters where sailing
ships were less effective,
instead of on the higher
profit margin seagoing
routes. Hence
steamships originally only
competed in traditional
shipping lines' "worst"
markets.[citation needed]
Safety bicycles Penny-farthings Penny farthings were
popular in the 1870s but
rendered obsolete by
safety bicycles.
Rail transport Canals, Horse-drawn The introduction of rail
vehicles transport completely
destroyed horse-drawn
transport especially for
long distances and also
freight transport by canal
was nearly wiped out.
Rail transport led to the
introduction of the joint-
stock company, railway
time and ultimately time
zones and also opened
up new markets for wider
fresh produce and
perishable goods
distribution. In
communications,
newspapers and postal
services were able to
offer daily services over
long-distances.[71][72]
Effects of the Horse-drawn At the beginning of the
car on vehicles, Rail 20th century, rail
societies, Mass transport, Trams, Walking (including streetcars) was
automobility the fastest and most
cost-efficient means of
land transportation for
goods and passengers in
industrialized countries.
The first cars, buses and
trucks were used for local
transportation
in suburban areas, where
they often replaced
streetcars and industrial
tracks. As highways
expanded, medium- and
later long-distance
transports were relocated
to road traffic, and some
 railways closed down. As
rail traffic has a
lower ton-kilometer cost,
but a higher investment
and operating cost than
road traffic, rail is still
preferred for large-scale
bulk cargo (such as
minerals).
However, traffic
congestion provides a
bound on the efficiency of
car use, and so rail is still
used for urban passenger
transport.
High speed rail Short-distance flights In almost every market
where high speed rail
with journey times of two
hours or less was
introduced in competition
with an air service, the air
service was either greatly
reduced within a few
years or ceased entirely.
Even in markets with
longer rail travel times,
airlines have reduced the
number of flights on offer
and passenger numbers
have gone down.
Examples include
the Barcelona-Madrid
high speed railway,
the Cologne Frankfurt
high speed
railway (where no direct
flights are available as of
2016) or the Paris-
London connection after
the opening of High
Speed 1. For medium-
distance trips, like
between Beijing &
Shanghai, the high speed
rail and airlines often end
up in extremely stiff
competition.
Private jet Supersonic transport The Concorde aircraft
has so far been the only
supersonic airliner in
extensive commercial
traffic. However, it
catered to a small
customer segment, which
could later afford small
private sub-sonic jets.
The loss of speed was
compensated by flexibility
and a more direct routing
(i.e. no need to go
through a hub).
Supersonic flight is also
banned above inhabited
land, due to sonic booms.
Concorde service ended
in 2003.[73]