Disruptive Products

Clayton M. Christensen, in his terrific book The Innovator's Dilemma; the Revolutionary Book that Will Change the Way You Do Business (Collins, 2005) talks about disruptive products and their impact. Destructive products are new ways of doing things that are done every day except the new products are simpler, easier, cheaper, or more convenient. They completely remake markets. The last shall be first sort of stuff.

Take the travel industry. Use to be when I wanted to take a flight I called my travel agent, told her when and where I wanted to leave. Sometimes I called two of them just to make sure one of them didn't miss something or wasn't working hard enough for me. They checked their computers and got back to me with times and dates and cost. I picked one and the winning agent made the reservations and I paid either off my charge card over the phone and she mailed them to me or if there wasn't time for them to reach me in the mail I went to her office and picked up the tickets and paid her then.

Enter the computer. This is definitely a candidate for the most disruptive technology since the printing press award or at least it's in the running.

Now when I want to fly somewhere I go to my computer and Google cheap fares. I put in the parameters and the computer spits out 250 or so of the cheapest fares that fit my specifications and I make a choice and reserve the flight and pay with my charge card and print out my boarding passes. Whew!

Where is my travel agent now? Doing something else probably like taking out the garbage.

I could go industry by industry and say how the computer has blown up the old business model.

Go get Christensen's book and read it. Then read it again and again. Wait six months and read it again. It will be new to you all over again.

Entrepreneurship is the life's blood of all my professional activities. It makes them go. And go read my mystery for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.