ABSTRACT

Since it was first proposed by Christensen, disruptive innovation theory has provoked considerable debate in academia and industry. Initially limited to low-end innovations, most of the controversy around the theory has focused on other types of innovations that the theory excludes. This article examines both high-end and low-end disruptive innovations. Instead of technological development, the focus of analysis is on market groups, known as adopter categories. Adopter groups have various characteristics and sizes that play a critical role in the diffusion process of disruptive innovation. In addition, high-end and low-end should be very different in terms of relative advantage, one of the innovation attributes influencing the rate of adoption. To successfully ‘disrupt’ an incumbent, an innovation should have the potential to cross a critical chasm between early niche markets and majority mainstream markets. We conducted case studies on the rigid disk drives and the computer industry to illustrate the analytical approach based on the innovation diffusion process theory and the characteristics of various adopter categories.

摘要

自从克里斯滕森首次提出颠覆性创新理论以来，它就在学术界和工业界引起了相当大的争论。最初仅限于低端创新，围绕该理论的大部分争议都集中在该理论所排除的其他类型的创新上。本文研究了高端和低端的颠覆性创新。分析的重点不是技术发展，而是市场群体，即采用者类别。采用者群体具有各种特征和规模，在颠覆性创新的传播过程中发挥着关键作用。此外，高端和低端在相对优势方面应该有很大的不同，这是影响采用率的创新属性之一。为了成功地“颠覆”在位者，一项创新应该有可能跨越早期利基市场和大多数主流市场之间的关键鸿沟。我们对硬盘驱动器和计算机行业进行了案例研究，以说明基于创新扩散过程理论的分析方法和各种采用者类别的特征。