

How Disruptive Innovation Theory predicted the rise of the iPhone - ActVen
http://www.actven.com/how-disruptive-innovation-theory-predicted-the-rise-of-the-iphone/

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RyanZAG
There is nothing in the article that has anything to do with the title.
Article just states that the iPhone was an example of 'New-Market Disruption'
- not exactly breakthrough information in 2013 - and that you need to use
different performance measures for disruptions. Obviously. The difficulty is
in deciding which new performance measures are actually valuable to consumers,
and the article or this theory doesn't seem to help there.

ie. iPhone had great multimedia and web browsing performance, but those new
rugged phones that came out around the same time had great resistance to
knocks and battery performance.

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brownbat
I don't think "predicted" is the right word...

It may be more accurate to say that "DIT may help explain the iPhone's initial
poor reviews and subsequent apparent success."

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glaugh
If anything, predictions based on the innovator's dilemma were wrong:
[http://daringfireball.net/2012/07/iphone_disruption_five_yea...](http://daringfireball.net/2012/07/iphone_disruption_five_years_in)

I think disruptive innovation is a very useful concept, but this just goes to
show how hard it is to apply a priori.

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ActVen
I actually thought about mentioning that article. I think it is important to
point out that someone who outlines a theory as broad as disruptive innovation
is not always the best person to apply it in every situation. I think he made
a mistake when he chose the competitive frame for the iPhone to be all cell
phones. I think the right competitive frame is smart phones. That makes all
the difference in the assessment.

