{"id":16716,"date":"2020-10-29T23:30:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-30T03:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=16716"},"modified":"2020-11-07T14:54:53","modified_gmt":"2020-11-07T18:54:53","slug":"sustaining-and-disruptive-innovation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/sustaining-and-disruptive-innovation\/","title":{"rendered":"Sustaining and Disruptive Innovation: Is One Better?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>What are sustaining and disruptive innovation? What is the difference between sustaining and disruptive innovation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sustaining and disruptive innovation are different strategies firms can employ to bring new products to market. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/sustaining-innovations\/\">Sustaining innovations<\/a> secure share in the current market while disruptive innovations shake up the market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Read on to better understand the difference between sustaining and disruptive innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Sustaining and Disruptive Innovation<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>There are two types of technological innovations to compare: sustaining technology vs disruptive technology.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>1) <strong>Sustaining innovations <\/strong>simply improve upon the performance of the industry\u2019s existing products, thus catering to the established market. This represents the majority of technological advancements in any industry. Most companies that produce goods follow a fairly consistent trajectory of improving their products: They adopt technological advancements as they become available, and they release updated versions of their products with the new improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some sustaining innovations are simple changes, while others are technologically complex. Regardless, <strong>no matter how complicated the change, established companies almost always lead their industries in producing and marketing sustaining innovations.&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>2) <strong>Disruptive innovations<\/strong> disrupt the performance improvement trajectory. These technologies don\u2019t appeal to existing customers\u2014instead, they open up an entirely new market.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Disruptive innovations take many forms: Some are technologically advanced, while others are simple reconfigurations that offer new features. Some disruptive innovations invade markets like wildfire, while others take years or decades to take hold. <strong>No matter what the disruptive innovation is, entrant firms\u2014or startups\u2014almost always become the dominant forces in producing and selling it.<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We\u2019ll take a closer look at sustaining technology vs disruptive technology and how these two types of changes impacted established and entrant firms in the disk drive industry. In the context of this book, established firms will refer to companies that existed before a given technological change, and entrant firms will refer to companies that started up at the same time the innovation was emerging.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What are sustaining and disruptive innovation? What is the difference between sustaining and disruptive innovation? Sustaining and disruptive innovation are different strategies firms can employ to bring new products to market. Sustaining innovations secure share in the current market while disruptive innovations shake up the market. Read on to better understand the difference between sustaining and disruptive innovation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":13418,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,104],"tags":[141],"class_list":["post-16716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-marketing","tag-the-innovators-dilemma","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Sustaining and Disruptive Innovation: Is One Better? - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"What&#039;s the difference between sustaining and disruptive innovation? More importantly, do you know what&#039;s best? Find out the best use of each.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/sustaining-and-disruptive-innovation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sustaining and Disruptive Innovation: Is One Better?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"What&#039;s the difference between sustaining and disruptive innovation? More importantly, do you know what&#039;s best? Find out the best use of each.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/sustaining-and-disruptive-innovation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Shortform Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-10-30T03:30:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-11-07T18:54:53+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/wordpress.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/okr-tracking-measure-whatt-matters-scaled.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2560\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1708\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Rina Shah\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Rina Shah\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/sustaining-and-disruptive-innovation\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/sustaining-and-disruptive-innovation\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Rina Shah\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/d07435826f13a8f422d5d333dceac287\"},\"headline\":\"Sustaining and Disruptive Innovation: Is One Better?\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-10-30T03:30:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-11-07T18:54:53+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/sustaining-and-disruptive-innovation\/\"},\"wordCount\":327,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/sustaining-and-disruptive-innovation\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/okr-tracking-measure-whatt-matters-scaled.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"The Innovator's Dilemma\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Business\",\"Marketing\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/sustaining-and-disruptive-innovation\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/sustaining-and-disruptive-innovation\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/sustaining-and-disruptive-innovation\/\",\"name\":\"Sustaining and Disruptive Innovation: Is One Better? - Shortform Books\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/sustaining-and-disruptive-innovation\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/sustaining-and-disruptive-innovation\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/okr-tracking-measure-whatt-matters-scaled.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-10-30T03:30:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-11-07T18:54:53+00:00\",\"description\":\"What's the difference between sustaining and disruptive innovation? 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