Debating Disruptive Innovation

Few MIT Sloan Management Review articles garner as much attention as Andrew A. King and Baljir Baatartogtokh's article How Useful Is the Theory of Disruptive Innovation? in the fall 2015 issue. After interviewing and surveying 79 industry experts, King and Baatartogtokh concluded that many of the 77 industry cases cited as examples of disruptive innovation by Harvard Business School professor Clayton M. Christensen and his coauthor Michael E. Raynor did not actually fit four of the theory's key elements well. Christensen has done what businesspeople wish all advisors would do. He extracted from his research a key reason why so many dominant companies fall. He explained it in understandable and compelling terms. He articulated simple tests to identify potentially disruptive innovations to help companies avoid failure and grow profits.