the four stages of disruption

As a follow up fo my previous post showing the hilariousness of a 1995 less than visionary article in Newsweek about the future of tech, here’s are really good 2014 summary about the 4 stages of disruption by Steven Sinofsky (yes the windows 8 genius)

Here’s a summary 

The premise is that If we're so aware of disruption, then why do successful products (or companies) keep getting disrupted? 

First stage is the Disruption of the Incumbent: incumbent’s attitudes towards technology disruption are particularly cliche, range from “new technologies are inferior”, “new products do not do all the things existing products do”, or 'are inefficient” to “new services fail to address existing needs as well as what is already in place”. 

Second stage is Rapid Linear Expansion: the product creators are still disruptors, innovating along the trajectory they set for themselves, with a strong focus on early-adopter customers, themselves disruptors. The disruptors are following their vision. The incumbents continue along their existing and successful trajectory, unknowingly sealing their fate.

​Third stage is called Appealing Convergence: as the market redefinition proceeds, the category of a new product starts to undergo a subtle redefinition. No longer is it enough to do new things well; the market begins to call for the replacement of the incumbent technology with the new technology. In this phase, the entire market begins to “wake up” to the capabilities of the new product.

Fourth stage: Complete re-imagination. The last stage of technology disruption is when a category or technology is reimagined from the ground up.

Here's the article >>>

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​My name's phil mora and I blog about the things I love: fitness, hacking work, tech and anything holistic. 

Head of Product and VP Engineering at Sikka Software.
thinker, doer, designer, coder, leader.