Disruption also attracts attention: disruptors are people who look for trouble and find it. Disruptive kids get sent to the principal's office. Disruptive companies often pick fights they can't win.
Your organization may not consider itself a technology company today, but the disruptors in your industry do, and it’s only a matter of time before these disruptors find a way to improve what you do.
Startups are unencumbered by the status quo. They re-envision how an industry can operate and grow, and they focus on better value propositions. On the low-end, they undercut cost structures, resulting in customer migration. At the high-end they create products and services that never existed before.
In a nutshell, Mr Christensen’s insight was that it is not stupidity that prevents great firms from foreseeing disruption but rather their supreme rationality. They do “the right thing”, focusing on better products for their best and most profitable clients, often to the point of over-engineering (how many Mach and Fusion blades does a chin need?). But that is “the wrong thing” if it blinds them to the threat from poorly capitalised upstarts offering cheaper stuff in markets too obscure to worry about. Such threats can swiftly turn existential if the rivals move upmarket and go for the jugular.
Nobody ever talks about this part.. You know, the part where you're no longer a caterpillar not yet a butterfly. You don't know who you are and you don't know where you're going. All you know is that every fiber of your being is calling for transformation. For disruption. For a revolution of the spirit. So surrender. Breakdown. This is not the death of You. This is the dying of who you once were. This is your rebirth, darling.