Disruption is a reality confronting businesses across the economic landscape.
Since the theory of disruptive innovation was first introduced by former Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen—creator of the HBS Online course Disruptive Strategy—it's proven to be a useful framework for examining the radical changes industries undergo as emerging technologies and business models upend the status quo set by established companies.
Before diving into disruptive technologies at play in the world today, it’s important to first understand what disruption is and how it happens.
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What Is Disruptive Technology?
Disruption describes the process of a smaller company with fewer resources successfully challenging an established incumbent business. According to Disruptive Strategy, this happens when incumbents focus on improving the products and services for their most demanding, profitable customers, leading them to neglect segments at the low end of the market.
This enables new entrants, such as startups, to meet those overlooked customers' needs at a lower price point or create a market where none existed. From there, the newcomers improve their offerings and build on their successes—eventually moving from fringe to widespread, mainstream adoption. It's at this stage that entrants can compete head-on with incumbent businesses, causing disruption.
Disruptive technology is a technological innovation that causes disruption within a market or industry. Adoption of disruptive technologies often forces incumbent businesses to rethink their processes or adapt their business models to compete with new entrants. This phenomenon is referred to as technological disruption.
History is full of examples:
The printing press disrupted scribes
Cars disrupted railroads
The internet disrupted print news
Smartphones disrupted countless industries, from cameras to film
Today, emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, additive manufacturing, and cloud computing continue to push entire industries toward disruption—driving innovation in the process.
3 Examples of Industries Facing Disruptive Technology
Research reveals that 70 percent of CEOs say their companies face high levels of disruption. As disruptive technologies take hold across the business world, here are three industries on the cusp of transformation.
1. Generative AI in Professional Services
Few technologies have advanced and disrupted industries as rapidly as generative artificial intelligence. What began as relatively simple text-generation tools has evolved into systems capable of performing complex tasks once reserved for highly trained professionals.
For decades, the professional services industry—spanning law, accounting, consulting, and financial advisory—was considered largely resistant to automation. The work was considered too nuanced, judgment-intensive, and relationship-driven to automate. Generative AI is now challenging that assumption directly.
Leading firms across the industry are already embedding generative AI into their core workflows. Financial services firm Goldman Sachs has rolled out internal generative AI assistants to thousands of employees, supporting tasks like drafting reports, summarizing regulatory documents, and extracting insights from financial data.
Broader analyses by McKinsey suggest that generative AI could increase the overall impact of automation on business functions by 15 to 40 percent, with particularly strong effects in areas such as customer operations, software development, and marketing.
Firms that have integrated these capabilities are already processing work faster and at lower cost—placing competitive pressure on companies that haven't reimagined their staffing, pricing, and service delivery models.
AI adoption has accelerated rapidly, with a large majority of Fortune 500 companies actively experimenting with or deploying these tools.
For professional services incumbents, the strategic question is no longer whether to engage with generative AI, but how quickly—and how fundamentally—to restructure around it before new entrants redefine the competitive landscape.
2. 3D Printing in Manufacturing
The advent of 3D printing technology, also referred to as additive manufacturing, has led to seismic shifts in the way products are made for industries ranging from aerospace to health care. What began as a prototyping tool is now evolving into a scalable production technology with significant economic potential.
Market forecasts suggest the global 3D printing industry will expand dramatically in the coming decade, growing from roughly $29 billion in 2025 to well over $150 billion by 2035.
“The technology provides an unprecedented ability to customize products and respond quickly to shifts in market demand,” explains Dartmouth College Professor Richard D'Aveni in the Harvard Business Review. “As a result, it's moving from limited applications, such as prototyping and making conventional machine tools, to a central role in manufacturing for a growing number of industries.”
While 3D printing began as a niche technology, it's evolved into a core component of modern production systems across leading global companies. Airbus, for example, now produces more than 25,000 flight-ready 3D-printed parts annually, embedding them across aircraft platforms to reduce weight, shorten production timelines, and increase supply chain flexibility.
In the retail space, Adidas has pushed the boundaries of design and customization with its fully 3D-printed CLIMACOOL footwear. By eliminating traditional assembly processes, the company has demonstrated how digital fabrication can enable entirely new product architectures while reducing material waste.
Within healthcare, leading companies, such as medical technology giant Stryker, use additive manufacturing to produce orthopedic implants designed to mimic natural bone and support biological integration. By enabling complex geometries difficult to achieve with traditional methods, this approach allows for improved clinical performance and greater treatment personalization.
The limits of what's possible with 3D printing are still being tested, but the technology is already shaking up the traditional manufacturing sector, and it's poised to make a lasting impact.
3. Streaming Platforms in Home Entertainment
For years, Blockbuster dominated the home entertainment market. The company was built around a specific customer need: quickly picking up a popular film for “movie night.” Customers weren't seeking a deep catalog—they prioritized convenience, new releases, and immediate availability.
When Netflix entered the market, it introduced a fundamentally different value proposition: personalized streaming services. Instead of focusing on the Friday night rush, Netflix addressed a different customer need: helping viewers discover content tailored to their preferences and watch it on their schedule.
As HBS Professor Willy Shih, who now leads Disruptive Strategy, explains, “Netflix focused on logistics, personalization, and customer data.” This enabled the company to recommend movies and TV shows based on individual preferences while distributing demand across a much broader catalog. This approach not only improved the user experience but also created a more efficient system than Blockbuster’s store-based model.
Today, Netflix’s early strategic choices have positioned it at the center of a massive consumer behavior shift. According to Forbes, the average consumer pays for 2.9 streaming subscriptions, and Netflix leads the industry—surpassing 300 million subscribers worldwide.
Streaming's rise has reshaped how people consume entertainment, and the competitive dynamics continue to evolve: new entrants, consolidation, and the rise of ad-supported tiers are now doing to early streaming leaders what streaming once did to Blockbuster—forcing them to adapt or fall behind.
The Netflix–Blockbuster story is often framed as a simple tale of digital disruption, but the deeper lesson is strategic alignment.
“As conditions changed, Netflix adapted," Shih says in Disruptive Strategy. "It tested new pricing models, refined its recommendation system, and expanded its distribution network based on what it learned from customers. That process of small experiments followed by broader shifts became a core part of how they developed strategy.”
Netflix succeeded not because it had better technology, but because it built a system that matched the job customers wanted done—and adapted as that job evolved.
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Opportunity in Change
While disruption brings radical change to industries, it also presents an opportunity for established businesses to adapt and grow. In a recent Deloitte report, more than 80 percent of business leaders expect emerging technologies to fundamentally reshape their industries, viewing technological disruption as a catalyst for innovation.
As disruptive technologies continue to emerge across business sectors, entrants and incumbents alike are afforded the chance to innovate in the face of shifting market demands.
Do you want to deepen your understanding of disruptive innovation? Explore Disruptive Strategy—one of our strategy and entrepreneurship and innovation courses—and download our free strategy formulation e-book to learn how to drive growth in your organization.
This post was updated on May 26, 2026. It was originally published on October 29, 2018.