Disruptive Technology

In the business book The Innovator's Dilemma (2000), Clayton Christensen describes how disruptive technologies have precipitated the failure of leading products as well as their associated and well-managed firms. Christensen defines criteria to identify disruptive technologies regardless of their market. Such technologies have the potential to replace mainstream technologies as well as their associated products and principal vendors. Disruptive technologies, abstractly defined by Christensen, are "typically cheaper, simpler, smaller, and, frequently, more convenient" than their mainstream counterparts.

Wireless technology, compared to incumbent wired networks, is a disruptive technology. For the competitive service provider, 802.11b is "cheaper, simpler, smaller, and, frequently, more convenient" than copper wire and its associated infrastructure. In order for a technology to be truly disruptive, it must disrupt an incumbent vendor or service provider. Some entity must go out of business before a technology can be considered disruptive. Although it is too early to point out the incumbent service providers driven out of business by 802.11b, its technologies could be potentially disruptive to incumbent telephone companies. The migration of wireline telephone traffic from ILEC to cellular is a powerful example of this trend.