Examples of Disruptive Innovation
An
article about the Cirque du Soleil I recently read made me wonder whether we should think of Cirque du Soleil as the iPhone or the Seiko of Circus…
Let's take a look first at the difference between the iPhone and a (Seiko) quartz watch: Given that the quartz watch forced the Swiss to relinquish their dominance in timepieces (fortunately there wasn't anything to keep them from moving into the jewelry market) - one might think of the quartz watch as Disruptive. But while quartz was clearly Disruptive to the Swiss watch industry, was it also Disruptive in the sense conveyed through
Christensen's observations?
I would submit that with QUARTZ, the basic timekeeping paradigm did not change - quartz simply improved the ability to keep accurate time for those who would be wearing and using a watch anyway. As such, it should not have been too much of a surprise when shortly thereafter cell phones (the old fashioned kind) were able to handily displace the wristwatch from being the dominant means of telling time, whether someone was wearing a watch or not.
The IPHONE on the other hand, being apps-driven and socially oriented, created a market for the Apple version of the pocket PC among a great number that did not previously depend on mobile access to data - and because it had a phone function that worked well enough to keep the user from having to carry a second device, it displaced prior products and producers that previously dominated the industry. In this case, great cellular handsets became replaced by devices that were relatively poor as handsets, which is what Disruptive Innovation was named for in the first place.
So then
is CIRQUE DU SOLEIL simply a better circus and thus not really a disruptive innovation at all, or is it something other than a circus that is (or will) replace and perhaps even re-establish the circus in a different format – or are we simply being distracted by products with similar names that have nothing to do with each other and never will?
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