An assessment framework for disruptive innovation

C.C. Hang, Jin Chen and Dan Yu

C.C. Hang is based at the Division of Engineering and Technology Management, National University of Singapore, Singapore. Jin Chen is based at the School of Management, Zhejiang University, Zhejiang, China. Dan Yu is based at The Gallup Organization, Singapore.

Abstract Purpose This paper aims to present an assessment framework which captures the essential characteristics and holistic success factors for disruptive innovation based on the original theory of Christensen, a number of clarications as reported in the literature and a study of known, successful cases in the literature. Design/methodology/approach The framework was designed based on the improved understanding of disruptive innovation challenges and on the holistic consideration of innovation as a dynamic process. It consists of structured questions which could be used to guide detailed data collection and analysis needed to answer the key questions which constitute the assessment framework. They are grouped under market positioning, technology and other favourable drivers. Findings A simple yet comprehensive assessment framework for disruptive innovation has been developed. Two of the known successful cases, namely the steel minimill of Nucor and the 3.5 inch disk drive of Conner/Seagate, were presented in more detail to illustrate the use of this systematic framework in assessing the success potential of these cases of disruptive innovations in either the low-end or new markets. A third and fairly new example, that of the limited mobile phone system/product of UTStarcom, was then presented to illustrate a case where the framework revealed reasons for potential failure. A fourth example of Googles web-based ofce applications then illustrated how the framework might be used to study the disruptive potential of a new product. Originality/value This paper enables a more accurate and systematic assessment of disruptive innovation. The framework also has the potential to be further developed into a systematic tool for answering the question of whether the disruptive innovation theory could indeed be used to provide ex ante prediction of the success of a new disruptive innovation. Keywords Disruptive innovation, Assessment framework, Market position, Technology driver, Assessment Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction
The disruptive innovation theory, advanced by Christensen in a seminar paper (Christensen and Bower, 1996) and a famous book (Christensen, 1997), has appealed widely to practicing managers. It pointed out clearly the threat to successful incumbents which may over-focus on the necessary sustaining innovation and hence could fail to capture the new opportunity presented by an emerging disruptive innovation. The disruptive technology may be inferior initially relative to the performance appreciated by mainstream customers, but which has certain disruptive characteristics appreciated by non-consumers in the low-end or a new, niche market (typically cheaper, smaller, easier-to-use, etc.). After building a market foothold, the technology would need to improve continuously to overcome strong competitions from other potential disruptors or imitators. When the performance eventually meets the minimum requirement of over-served customers in the mainstream market, a disruption would occur as the incumbents are not well prepared for such a surprised attack from below. Another important reason for the continuing interest in the disruptive innovation

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DOI 10.1108/14636681111170185

theory is that the new market thus created could be so large that it could become a strategy sufcient for creating high-growth new businesses regardless of whether it would succeed in disrupting the incumbents eventually. Over the last decade, much clarications about the disruptive innovation theory have been made as more cases were studied in the literature (Yu and Hang, 2010). But there remains an unresolved argument among scholars (Danneels, 2004; Christensen, 2006) on the ex ante applications of the disruptive innovation theory in predicting whether an early stage disruptive innovation case would succeed subsequently, since the theory has been largely based on extensive study of empirical evidences of many successful cases in the past (ex post). Christensen has stated that the theory could indeed be applied for ex ante predictions and he cited four successful examples (Christensen, 2006) which he knew. Some scholars have contributed to the better understanding of the prediction issue. They include the general guidance to predict future disruptions by identifying the drivers (Paap and Katz, 2004), measure of disruptiveness which may be used to make ex ante predictions about the type of incumbent rms best positioned to develop disruptive innovations (Govindarajan and Kopalle, 2006; Ganguly et al., 2010), how an incumbent may identify a potential disruptive threat (Rai and Kampas, 2002), how industry change may stimulate disruptive innovations (Christensen et al., 2004), and a criteria sheet for comparing the relative competitive advantages of incumbent and entrant rms (Keller and Husig, 2009). In spite of the progress made in the literature, many academics and practitioners still view the innovation challenge from a specic perspective such as market development, which lacks the holism needed to more condently judge if an early stage disruptive innovation case would have a good chance to succeed. In this paper, we shall take up this challenge to develop a systematic and yet simple-enough framework for assessing the success factors for disruptive innovation. It is based on the improved understanding of disruptive innovation challenges and on the holistic consideration of innovation as a dynamic process. The framework can be used to guide detailed data collection and analysis needed to answer the key questions which constitute the assessment framework. It is noted that our proposed framework is different from the structural approach to assess innovation by Gatignon et al. (2002). Their structural approach is valuable to precisely describe innovations and their different importance to innovation outcomes. However, the typology does not particularly address the scale items to measure the disruptiveness of innovation. Govindarajan and Kopalle (2006) proposed a clear measurement of disruptive innovation and is used in our paper as the basic denition. Two of these well-known and successful cases, namely the steel minimill of Nucor and the 3.5 inch disk drive of Conner/Seagate, and a new case, that of limited mobile phone system/product of UTStarcom, were then presented to illustrate the use of this systematic framework in assessing the success or failure factors of these known cases in either the low-end or new markets. A fourth and new example of Googles web-based ofce applications would then illustrate how the framework may be used to study its disruptive potential against another dominant incumbents mainstream product. The paper will conclude with remarks on additional potential applications of this framework.

2. Proposed assessment framework

Christensen has discussed in his major publications all the fundamental success factors for disruptive innovation (Christensen, 1997; Christensen and Raynor, 2002). However, some scholars have only focused on one or two particular aspects of his work and missed others, leading to potential misinterpretations and confusion in the literature and in practice (Christensen, 2006; Yu and Hang, 2010). In our proposal for a suitable framework for assessing the disruptive potential of an innovation, we shall ensure that it is holistic enough to give a more comprehensive consideration; yet we need to make it simple and concrete in order to be useful to practitioners. Based on this objective, we propose an assessment framework consisting of three main parts: market positioning, technology and other drivers, which will be elaborated in the following.

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Assuming that a certain disruptive technology is available, Christensen and Raynor (2002) have focused on two appropriate market segments to establish an initial foothold for the disruptive business. One is the low-end market which would appreciate a product/service with a lower price while still providing a basic job-to-be-done at that level. The other is a new, niche market in which the disruptive product/service has good enough performance for the non-consumers there. It is important to differentiate these two types of initial markets for establishing a disruptive foothold, as they would alert the incumbents of the potential threat to a different degree and the uncertainty in market creation would also be different. After addressing the rst stage of establishing the market foothold, the disruptive innovation theory draws on the asymmetry of motivation to explain the likelihood that incumbents will run away towards a higher-end, more protable segment for a low-end disruption by new entrants to eventually succeed. However, if some strong incumbents decide otherwise to stay on for a head-on encounter, they often have sufcient resources to win against the new entrants. In the case of new market disruption, incumbents would most likely ignore the new entrants as their existing business is not threatened. Even if they want to enter the new, niche market, incumbents may not have the advantage unlike the case of the low-end disruption. To summarize, the market positioning part of the assessment framework should include the type of market for introducing the disruptive innovation (low-end, new or both) and whether the asymmetry of motivation condition is satised. The disruptive technology is different from sustaining technology in that, while the former does not meet the demand of the mainstream market, it has certain performance features which are adequate or attractive to the low-end or new niche market customers who are non-consumers in the past. Once it has established such a market foothold, it would face erce competition from other similar rms and so continuous R&D is needed to improve performance, price/performance, etc. This dimension of erce competition and need for continuing R&D has not been sufciently emphasized in the past as researchers have focused on the business model innovation dimension. But potential disruptors know this well. For the technology part of the assessment framework, it is thus important to include the R&D dimension to ask if the disruptive technology could indeed be further improved in performance, price/performance, etc. and that the R&D should be affordable. The R&D strategy, such as miniaturization, seems to be similar in disruptive and sustaining innovations; there is indeed a major difference owing to different performance targets which in turn would lead to different degrees of effort hence the importance of emphasizing affordability of R&D and the time and resources required in the case of disruptive technology (Yu and Hang, 2011). For eventual disruption of the mainstream incumbents, one should not forget the basic assumption that there exists a performance overshoot causing the mainstream customers to be over-served. As the real-life situation is dynamic, this condition is not always satised and hence needs to be checked regularly. As in any other type of technological innovations, there exist other signicant drivers which could inuence the pace or even fate of innovation over time. Lifestyle change is one of these drivers, an example being the unexpected appeal of netbook computers to anyone who needs a mobile ofce with internet access. Legislation change is another potential driver, an example being the stricter environmental control law in some countries which facilitates the introduction of some green products. There exist at least two other emerging drivers, one being the growing importance of large developing countries as new growth markets better known as the bottom-of-the-pyramid (BOP) opportunities (Prahalad, 2004). As developed markets have less opportunity for growth, multinational companies have started to develop original products suitable for high-growth emerging markets which are typically characterized by their demand for affordability but also with good-enough performance. A good example is the recent product development strategy of GE Medical (Immelt et al., 2009). The other is the graying population starting with Japan and Germany, and rapidly spreading to US, Europe and even China the effect of such demographic changes on future markets and innovation is well-known (Drucker, 1985). A good example is the recent success of Nintendo Wii game console with intuitive user-interface which appeals to the senior citizens globally including females (Osterwalder, 2007).The above examples of other signicant drivers are more general in nature; there may be additional drivers more specic

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to a particular industry. A typical one is the network effects in the software industry (Gallaugher and Wang, 2002). Network effects occur when the value of a good increases with the number of users of that good. Indicators about the extent of network effects include the switching costs, coordination costs, and also the customers expectations of the future network size of the product which would inuence buying decisions. It is noted that the signicant drivers could either be enabling or be unfavorable to innovation. In order to avoid confusion, we recommend using the term favorable drivers, with yes indicating enabling and no indicating negative inuence (including any show-stopper). We have collated and summarized the proposed assessment framework into a one-page form as shown in Figure 1. An in-depth study of the case to be assessed would indeed be needed in order to answer yes or no in each question in the framework with sufcient condence. It is thus assumed that the assessor has done sufcient homework/investigation using primary sources of information, ofcial documents, industry reports, and the conduct of surveys/interviews, etc as guided by the key questions in the framework. It is indeed not a simple and straightforward exercise to complete the assessment form and it may need some iterations to do it condently. But once the form is completed, it is easy to make assessments as follows:
B

If all the answers are yes, the framework indicates that both low-end and new market disruptions are progressing simultaneously. If all the answers are yes, with only two no being ticked for low-end market (in market positioning and technology), then the framework indicates that a new market disruption is on its way. On the contrary, if two no are ticked for new market, then it indicates that a low-end disruption is on its way. If there are other ticks of no, the framework indicates that there exist doubts about the eventual success of the disruption.

In the literature, especially the two famous books of Christensen (Christensen, 1997; Christensen and Raynor, 2002), more than 30 examples of successful cases have been described. Out of these 30 known, successful cases, ten had been studied quite extensively with more data available (Yu and Hang, 2008, 2010). The assessment framework has been veried using these ten known and successful cases. Two of these cases, namely the steel minimill of Nucor and the 3.5 inch diskdrive of Connor/Seagate will be presented in more detail in the next section.

Figure 1 Proposed assessment framework

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It should be pointed out that the purpose of this paper is not to focus on the challenge of ex ante prediction although the proposed assessment framework would contribute towards this goal in future. More references on ex ante prediction could be found in the literature (Ganguly et al., 2010; Rai and Kampas, 2002; Sainio and Puumalainen, 2007).

3. Application examples
We shall present two well known cases to illustrate how the proposed assessment framework would work for successful cases. In addition, two more new cases, one which was not successful eventually and one which is still ongoing, which further illustrate the applications of this framework, will be presented. More details and examples could be found elsewhere (Hang and Chen, 2010). 3.1 Nucors Minimill Minimill steel making rst became commercially viable in the mid-1960s (Christensen, 1997). Employing widely available and familiar technology and equipment, minimills melt scrap steels in electric arc furnaces instead of the conventional way of producing molten steel from iron ore in blast and basic oxygen furnaces. They are called minimills because their scale is typically one-tenth of that of integrated mill. When Nucor established the rst steel minimill (Christensen, 1997) to produce rebars, the conventional integrated steel mills could not compete with its good enough quality and yet lower-priced products. But since the prot margin for making rebars using the conventional production process with iron ores as raw materials was lower than angle iron, bars and rods, they were quite happy to run away from rebars to move to this higher-price, higher-margin and also larger market as indicated in Table I. The new production process of minimills using scrapped steels rather than raw iron cores enabled Nucor to reduce the energy consumption and achieve a 20 percent overall cost reduction, resulting in a good prot margin to build a strong business foothold. When other new entrant competitors in the rebars market also improved their processes and caused a further drop in price, the continuing R&D effort in Nucor created a cheaper way to make bigger and better steel, which enabled it to attack the angle iron, bars and rods market. The conventional steel mills responded in the same way: to run away to focus on the next tier of structural steel which has a higher margin and a much larger market. Several years later, Nucor repeated the strategy to encroach the structural steel market forcing the conventional steel mills to run away and focus on the high-quality sheet steel market which has a higher margin and larger market size. We have mapped the above analysis into the assessment form as shown in Figure 2. It is evident that Nucor had all the positive answers which ensured its success in disrupting the incumbents at the lower-ends. It did not have a new market disruption dimension and there was no other signicant driver in this area of business. 3.2 Conner/Seagates 3.5 inch disk drive Seagate pioneered and then became a strong incumbent in 5.25 inch disk drives for the desktop PC market after its success in disrupting the 8 inch disk drive makers in the early to mid-1980s. With the data storage capacity in the market increasing at more than 25 percent per year, it did not pay much attention immediately when Rodime rst developed a 3.5 inch drive in 1984 (Christensen, 1997). After 1987, Conner Peripherals, a spinoff from Seagate Table I Market segments of steel products
Market Rebar Angle iron; bars and rods Structural steel Sheet steel Other higher-end products Source: Christensen (1997) Gross margin (%) 7 12 18 25-30 . 30 Relative market size (%) 4 8 22 55 11

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Figure 2 Nucors minimill (success)

then introduced a small, lightweight 3.5 inch drive and found a new application portable laptop computers for Compaq and its competitors. It was very difcult for Seagates senior management to initially make a case for this smaller drive product which could not meet the needs of its key customers in the desktop computer industry as indicated by the performance gap in Table II. Even after Seagate reversed its earlier stand and introduced its own 3.5 inch drives in 1988, it could not compete well against the agility of Conner Peripherals which was able to grow rapidly by nding new customers in the mobile computing industry. In September 1995, Seagate announced that it would acquire Conner Peripherals in a deal valued at US$1 billion. Conner at that time was not only a manufacturer of disk and tape drives, it also owned a software subsidiary Acada Software. After experiencing component shortages, price pressures, and signicant losses, Conner agreed to the merger with Seagate. The successfully enlarged Seagate in 1996 accounted for 33 percent of all hard-drives sold globally making it the no. 1 market leader (Yu, 2008). Thereafter, Seagate focused on both market and technology developments to sustain its market shares in 3.5 inch and the related 2.5 inch disk drive products for the desktop PC and the mobile PC sectors. We have mapped the above analyses into the assessment form as shown in Figure 3. It is evident that Conner/Seagate had all the positive answers which ensured its success in creating a new and large mobile PC market, and eventually disrupting other incumbents in the desk-top PC market. There was also absence of other signicant drivers that might affect the above assessment. 3.3 UTStarcoms limited mobile system/phone UTStarcom successfully introduced a good enough limited-range mobile phone system/product (the PAS System/Litte-Smart Phone) in China since the late-1990s. While it Table II Performance comparison of disk drives in 1986
5.25 inch drive Capacity Average access time (msec) Data transfer rate (1 KB/sec) Size (mm) Cost . 80 MB 33.4 1,250 146.1 41.4 203 US$1,695 3.5 inch drive 40 MB 37.3 1,000 101.6 25.4 146 US$500

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Figure 3 Conner/Seagates 3.5 inch disk drive

did not offer roaming service (which was provided by the incumbent rms using the GSM), it was good enough for wireless communication within a city. The low-capital equipment attracted China Telecom, which did not have a mobile-phone license and was happy to adopt it as a xed-line extension to earn revenues. Customers who were previously non-consumers were satised with the lower charging rates as well as the lower-priced Little-Smart phones. The PAS/Little-Smart enabled UTStarcomm to earn an enviable revenue of more than US$2 billion in 2004 with about 60 percent share of the PAS/Little-Smart market which reached over 50 million customers after ve years of phenomenal growth. It had certainly established a strong foothold at the low-end mobile phone market and looked set to create a successful disruptive innovation. However, for various reasons including the expected delay of the 3G introduction and an attempt to ght back, the incumbents started to drop prices and introduce a new generation low-end GSM mobile phones. The growth of UTStarcom started to slow down while the prot margin was eroded owing to keen competitions. Furthermore, it was not clear how the original PAS technology of UTStarcom could be further improved. UTStarcom also did not invest sufciently in the low-end R&D as it diverted precious resources to pursue the 3G opportunity and another unrelated market IPTV. There were other signicant drivers in the dynamic mobile phone sector, including the potential withdrawal of the PAS/Little-Smart operational frequency range to make way for 3G, and the likelihood of the backing off of China Telecom if it eventually obtained a 3G mobile phone license, etc. We have mapped the above analyses into the assessment form as shown in Figure 4. The many no and ? entries give strong indications of the potential failure of the PAS/Little-Smart which was nally conrmed in 2009. This is in contrast to an earlier paper by Yuan et al. (2006) which predicted that the PAS/Little-Smart would co-exist with 2G/2.5G mobile communication networks for a considerable period of time. 3.4 Googles web-based ofce applications Unlike the dominant Microsofts desktop ofce software product such as Ofce 2007 which is tied to its Window Operating System, Google has exploited its internet capabilities to offer web-based ofce applications. Although a web application runs on a central server on the internet and is accessed via a web browser, it is independent of the Operating System which vastly simplies the application deployment. Web applications are often accompanied by a new business model, referred to as Software as a Service, where software is nanced by subscriptions, transaction fees or advertisements instead of retail sales or volume license deals (Keller and Husig, 2009).

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Figure 4 UTStarcom PAS/Little Smart (eventual failure)

Microsofts main customer segment is that of the enterprise customers and the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Its business model is built around developing operating systems and desktop software packages licensed to these customers. These clients do not nd web applications attractive, because of security concerns and a high demand for performance and features, even if they have inadvertently driven the performance to overshoot majority of user requirements. Google, on the other hand, found web applications suitable for its mode of rapid application development. It introduced Google Docs, a new suite of ofce applications, explicitly targeting Microsofts overshot customers. Google Docs offers less features and speed than Microsoft desktop applications. It is simpler to deploy without the need for software installation and is available free online to anyone with a web browser. It has begun to establish a foothold market and web applications could be further improved to offer desktop-like performance in the next few years. However, strong network effects which favor Microsofts products, have to-date resulted in customer inertia effectively blocking the advancement of Google Docs entry into the mainstream market. In addition, being aware of the disruptive threat from Google Docs, Microsoft does not choose to ee into higher customer segments. For instance, it has kept offering low-priced versions of its software for students and consumers. It has also been moving towards the Software as a Service model offering a mix of web and desktop applications to consumers and business clients. It has thus the option to use the time gained to co-opt the web-based innovation introduced by Google (Keller and Husig, 2009). We have mapped the above analyses into the assessment form as shown in Figure 5. The many no entries give strong indications of the difculty for Google Docs to disrupt Microsoft in the mainstream market.

4. Conclusion
We have developed a systematic assessment framework for assessing disruptive innovation based on the theory of Christensen and subsequent clarications in the literature. The Framework will require the assessor to consider key success factors in market positioning, technology and other favorable drivers. As shown in its application to the assessment of the selected cases, the framework has guided the detailed data collection and analysis needed to condently answer the key questions which constitute the framework. It should be pointed out that the mapping of detailed information gathered to the assessment framework is not a simple exercise and it may require some iterations. This could be a further research area to

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Figure 5 Googles web-based ofce applications

explore a more detailed sub-framework to simplify the data collection and subsequent mapping. In addition to the potential use of this assessment framework for researching into the question of whether the disruptive innovation theory could indeed be used ex ante to systematically predict future disruptive innovation candidates, we see future potential to use this framework to assess business plan, R&D plan, innovation plan, etc. as the systematic and holistic approach as required in the framework will ensure that a more holistic assessment is made. We also feel that a systematic assessment of disruptive innovation potential will play an increasing role in technology policy or strategy formulation especially in large companies and in publicly funded research institutes.

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About the authors

C.C. Hang received a PhD in Control Engineering from the University of Warwick, UK in 1973. He is Professor and Head, Division of Engineering and Technology Management, National University of Singapore, and a Professor of Policy and Strategy at NUS Business School. His current research interest is innovation management in emerging markets. C.C. Hang is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: etmhcc@nus.edu.sg Jin Chen received a PhD in Engineering Management from Zhejiang University in 1994. He is Professor and Director of ZJU Research Center for Science, Technology and Education Policy, and also Deputy Dean of the Undergraduate School. His research interests are in technology and innovation management, and S&T policy. He has published in international journals including IEEE Transactions On Engineering Management, Technovation, and R&D Management. Dan Yu received her PhD Degree from National University of Singapore in 2010, majoring in Management of Technological Innovation. She has published papers in international journals such as International Journal of Management Reviews and Journal of Software. She also has papers under review. Currently, she is working as a consulting specialist in Gallup Singapore ofce.

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