Clayton Christensen developed the theory of disruptive innovation in 1995 to describe a process where a new product takes root at the bottom of an existing market and works its way up, disrupting existing companies whose offerings may be too expensive or otherwise inaccessible to much of the market.
While Professor Christensen's groundbreaking theory has stood the test of time and been helping companies inform their strategies for nearly 20 years, he actively sought examples of organizations that deviate from his model of disruption. He believed that studying anomalies was the best way to refine and improve your theories.
Most recently, Tom Bartman, a Senior Research Fellow at Professor Christensen's Forum for Growth and Innovation at Harvard Business School, put the disruptive innovation theory to the test when he and his colleagues examined Tesla Motors, a company that manufactures premium electric cars, for a recent Harvard Business Review article.
Bartman and his team set out to determine whether Tesla was truly employing a disruptive innovation strategy within the automobile industry and, if so, whether it has successfully created a new top-down model of disruption, starting at the high end of the market and working its way down.
Professor Christensen was so eager to identify anomalies that he even hung a handmade wood sign above his office door at Harvard Business School. (That’s right, he's a hobbyist woodworker in his spare time.)
While Bartman ultimately determined that Tesla didn't make the cut, we can all learn from the Forum’s analysis of the company about what makes a new product, service, or technology truly disruptive rather than just an interesting breakthrough.
Check out the full article on HBR.