Practice question · Sort into groups
Sustaining or disruptive? Sort each pattern.
Groups: Sustaining innovation · Disruptive innovation
- Improves upmarket until it swallows the mainstream
- Takes root in a niche the leaders ignore
- Starts worse on mainstream metrics, but cheaper
- Incumbents usually win this game
- Improves the metrics existing customers already pay for
Hints
- One kind serves your best customers; the other starts at the bottom.
- Incumbents win the first race and lose the second.
Show the answer
Sustaining innovation: Improves the metrics existing customers already pay for, Incumbents usually win this game
Disruptive innovation: Starts worse on mainstream metrics, but cheaper, Takes root in a niche the leaders ignore, Improves upmarket until it swallows the mainstream
Why
The asymmetry is the theory: incumbents dominate sustaining races because their best customers demand them, and lose disruptive ones because those same customers scoff at the toy.
Practise Innovation and Entrepreneurship
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