Disruptive Technology

In his Harvard University business book, The Innovator's Dilemma, Clayton Christensen describes how disruptive technologies have precipitated the failure of leading products and their associated and well-managed firms. Christensen defines criteria to identify disruptive technologies, regardless of their market. These technologies have the potential to replace mainstream technologies and their associated products and principal vendors. Christensen abstractly defines disruptive technologies as "typically cheaper, simpler, smaller, and, frequently, more convenient" than their mainstream counterparts. ^[1]

Wireless technologies, relative to incumbent wired networks, are a disruptive technology. For the competitive service provider, WiMAX is "cheaper, simpler, smaller, and, frequently, more convenient" than copper wire or coax cable and their associated infrastructures. 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 incumbent service providers driven out of business by WiMAX, its technologies are potentially disruptive to incumbent telephone companies.