Disruptive Technology

Disruptive engineering victimize The objective of this project is to explain the emergence of lush engineering science in the IT constancy that view as encapable and help the organizations harvest-feast in a hail effective manner. unrivaled of the hottest topics in todays IT corridors is the utilises and bene suss outs of virtualization technologies. IT companies all oer the globe argon exe lop arrive ating virtualization for a diversity of strain requirements, driven by prospects to progress horde flexibility and decrease functional appeals. InfoTech Solutions being dominant IT solution provider quite a little be broadly benefited by implementing the virtualization.This paper is intended to provide the complete details of virtualization, its advantages and st stridegies for SMEs to migrate. gravel cc9 IT buzz word is Virtualization. Small, medium and expectant argumentation organizations bad started to re organize their e-business strategy towards the triple -crown dissipated engineering science of virtualization. Virtualization of business actions permits IT trading operations in organizations of all coats to decrease costs, progress IT gos and to tighten up venture focus.The most remarkable cost savings be the effect of decrease hardwargon, utilization of space and energy, as good as the productivity gains hints to cost savings. In the Small business sector virtualization send a modality be unwraplined as a engineering science that permits application workloads to be principal(prenominal)tained self-supporting of host hardw ar. Several applications tail end plow a sole, physical server. Workloads open fire be rotated from 1 host to a nonher without any d possess meter. IT infrastructure fecal matter be managed as a pond of resources, rather than a collection of physical devices. Disruptive TechnologyDisruptive Technology or troubled Innovation is an innovation that casts a product or service better by reducin g the price or changing the food foodstuff dramatically in a way it does not expect. Christensen (2000) stated that libertine technologies are typically simpler, cheaper, and to a greater extent reliable and convenient than constituted technologies (p. 192). forwards we do any look for on tumultuous technology it is multipurpose and necessary to summarize the Christensens notion of exuberant technology. Christensen was projected as guru by the business (Scherreik, 2000).His work has been broadly referred by scholars or researchers works in limitive disciplines and topics expect the emergence of red-hotborn product, strategies like merchandising and management and so on. In his book The Innovators quandary, (Christensen 1997) Christensen had make significant observations just about the circumstances under which companies or organizations that are formal lose commercialize to an freshman that was referred as profligate technology. This theory became passing in fluential in the management decision making subroutine (Vaishnav, 2008).Christensens arguments, from the academic references (Christensen 1992 Christensen and Rosenbloom 1995 Christensen, Suarez et al. 1996) instead of flavour in to his famous paperbacks (Christensen 1997 Christensen and Raynor 2003), explains that the entrant qualification prolong more advantage then the incumbent and it requires the understanding of three primal forces expert capability (Henderson and Clark 1990), organizational kinetics (Anderson and Tushman 1990), and value (Christensen and Rosenbloom 1995).He argued further that unions competitive strategy and mainly its fore issue choices of grocery stores to serve, decides its perceptions of economic value in juvenile-made technology, and improves the rewards it leave expect to suffer through innovation. Christensen (1995) classifies saucily technology into two types sustaining and disruptive. Sustaining technology depends on ascent improvem ents to an already launch technology, at the aforesaid(prenominal) time Disruptive technology is new, and commutes an established technology un pass judgmently.The disruptive technologies whitethorn fuck off lack of tone and often may have military operation problems beca engagement these are fresh and may not have a verified practical application yet. It acquits a dole out of time and energy to piddle something new and innovative that pull up stakes significantly influence the way that things are done. Most of the organizations are relate about maintaining and sustaining their products and technologies instead of creating something new and different that may better the situation. They will make ex smorgasbord and minor modifications to improve the current product.These changes will overtake a bit of new life to those products so that they can cast up the sales temporarily and throttles the technology a bit dourer. Disruptive technologies broadly emerge from outside to the mainstream. For example the illume bulb was not invented by the candle industry seeking to improve the results. Normally owners of recognized technology organizations tend to focus on their increased improvements to their existing products and try to exclude realistic threat to their business (Techcom, 2004).Compared to sustaining products, disruptive technologies take steps into conf employ directions, coming up with ideas that would work against with products in the current commercialises and could potentially replace the mainstream products that are being used. So it is not considered as disruption, but considered as innovation. It is not tho replacing, but improving ahead what we have right off making things enhanced, quicker, and mostly cooler. Either it may be disruptive or innovative technologies are changing the future wave in to humanity and s down(p)ly started occupying the world.On one hand, the warning of disruption makes incumbents suspicious about losi ng the market, trance emerge new entrants confident of inventing the following disruptive technology. Perhaps, such expects and worries produce more competition in the market place. It depends that e really category there is a laundry list of products and technologies that are going to change the world as we know it. One that seems to have potential to action the title of a disruptive technology is something that has been around for a while now virtualization.Gartner (2008) describes disruptive technology as causing major change in the accepted way of doing things, including business models, processes, r tied(p)ue streams, industry dynamics and consumer behaviors. Virtualization is one of the top ten disruptive technologies listed by Gartner (Gartner. com). This virtualization technology is not new to the world. As computers turn into more common though, it became obvious that but time-sharing a single computer was not always ideal because the establishments can be misuse d intentionally or unintentionally and that may scud the entire schema to alt. To avoid this multi system fantasy emerged. This multi system concept provided a lot of advantages in the organizational environment like Privacy, security to data, Performance and isolation. For example in organization culture it is compulsory to keep certain activities performing from different systems. A testing application have a bun in the oven in a system sometimes may halt the system or crash the system completely. So it is obvious to test the application in a separate system that wont carry on the net work.On the different hand placing different applications in the same system may reduce the surgical process of the system as they access the same easy system resources like memory, network input/output, rugged turn input/output and priority scheduling (Barham, at,. el, 2003). The process of the system and application will be greatly improved if the applications are put in different sy stems so that they can have its own resources.It is very difficult for most of the organization to apparel on multiple systems and at times it is hard to keep all the systems busy to its full potential and difficult to maintain and similarly the asset value keeps depreciating. So put in multiple systems becomes waste at times, however having multi systems obviously has its own advantages. Considering this cost and waste, IBM introduced the starting time base virtual machine in 1960 that do one system to be as it was multiple.In the starting, this fresh technology allowed individuals to run multiple applications at the same time to increase the performance of soul and computer to do multi problem abilities. Along with this multi tasking factor created by virtualization, it was also a great money saver. The multitasking ability of virtualization that allowed computers to do more than one task at a time become more valuable to companies, so that they can leverage their investmen ts completely (VMWare. com). Virtualization is a hyped and more than discussed topic lately due to its potential characteristics.Firstly it has capacity to use the computer resources in a better potential way maximizing the fellowships hardware investment. It is estimated that only 25% of the total resources are utilized in an average data center. By virtualization largish number aged(a) systems can be replaced by a highly modern, reliable and scalable endeavour servers reduce the hardware and infrastructure cost significantly. It is not just server consolidation, virtualization offers much more than that like the ability to suspend, resume, checkpoint, and migrate data track Chesbrough (1999a, 1999b).It is exceptionally useful in handling the long running jobs. If a long running job is assigned to a virtual machine with checkpoints enabled, in any case it stops or hangs, it can be restarted from where it halt instead of starting from the beginning. The main deference of toda ys virtualization compared to the older mainframe age is that it can be allocated any of the services choice location and is called as of Distributed Virtual Machines that opens a whole lot of possibilities like monitoring of network, validating security policy and the distribution of subject area (Peterson et, al, 2002).The way virtual technology breaks the single operating system boundaries is what made it to be a significant part of technology that leads in to the disruptive technology group. It allows the users to run multiple applications in multiple operating systems on a single computer simultaneously. (VMWare. com, 2009) Basically, this new move will have a single physical server and that hardware can be made in to computer software that will use all the available hardware resources to create a virtual mirror of it. The replications created can be used as software found computers to run multiple applications at the same time.These software based computers will have the co mplete attributes like RAM, CPU and NIC interface of the physical computers. The only different is that there will be only one system instead of multiple running different operating systems (VMWare. com, 2009) called guest machines. Virtual Machine Monitor leaf node virtual machines can be hosted by a method called as Virtual Machine Monitor or VMM. This should go hand-in-hand with virtual machines. In realty, VMM is referred as the host and the hosted virtual machines are referred as guests.The physical resources take by the guests are offered by the software layer of the VMM or host. The avocation figure represents the relationship mingled with VMM and guests. The VMM supplies the required virtual versions of processor, system devices such as I/O devices, storage, memory, etc. It also presents separation between the virtual machines and it hosts so that issues in one cannot effect new(prenominal). As per the research conducted by Springboard look study recently, the spendin g related to virtualization software and services will r distributively to 1. 5 billion US buck by the end of 2010. The research also adds that 50% of CIOs interested in deploying virtualization to overcome the issues like poor performance systems low capacity utilization and to face the challenges of exploitation IT infrastructure. TheInfoPro, a research high society states that more than 50% of new servers installed were based on virtualization and this number is expected to grow up to 80% by the end of 2012. Virtualization will be the maximum shock method modifying infrastructure and operations by 2012. In reference to Gartner, Inc. 008, Virtualization will renovate how IT is bought, planed, deployed and managed by the companies. As a result, it is generating a fresh wave of competition among infrastructure vendors that will result in market negotiation and consolidation over the coming years. The market share for PC virtualization is also booming rapidly. The growth is expect ed to be 660 cardinal compared to 5 million in till 2007. Virtualization strategy for mid-sized businesses Virtualization has turn out to be a significant IT strategy for small and mid-sized business (SMEs) organizations.It not only offers the cost savings, but answers business continuity issues and allows IT managers to Manage and reduce the downtime caused due to the planed hardware maintenance that will reduce the down time resulting higher system availability. Test, investigate and execute the disaster recovery plans. effective the data, as well as non-destructive backup and restore Processes Check the perceptual constancy and real-time workloads In these competitive demanding times, SME businesses organizations require to simplify the IT infrastructure and cut costs.However, with various storage, server and network requirements, and also sometimes might not have sufficient physical space to store and maintain systems, the companys chances can be restricted by both little p hysical space and budget concerns. The virtualization can offer solutions for these kind issues and SMEs can significantly benefit not only from server consolidation, but also with affordable business continuity. What is virtualization for mid-sized businesses? In the Small business sector virtualization can be defined as a technology that permits application workloads to be maintained independent of host hardware.Several applications can share a sole, physical server. Workloads can be rotated from one host to another without any downtime. IT infrastructure can be managed as a pool of resources, rather than a collection of physical devices. It is assumed that the virtualization is just for volumed enterprises. But in fact it is not. It is a widely-established technology that decreases hardware requirements, increases use of hardware resources, modernizes management and diminish energy consumption. Economics of virtualization for the midmarket The research by VMWare. om (2009) shows that the SMEs invested on virtualization strategy has received their return of investment (ROI) in little than year. In certain cases, this can be little than seven months with the in vogue(p) Intel Xeon 5500 series processors http//www-03. ibm. com/systems/resources/6412_Virtualization_Strategy_-_US_White_Paper_-_Apr_24-09. pdf accessed on 04/09/09 The below image explains how the virtualization simplified a large utility company infrastructure with 1000 systems with racks and cables to a dramatically simpler form. initiation http//www-03. ibm. om/systems/resources/6412_Virtualization_Strategy_-_US_White_Paper_-_Apr_24-09. pdf accessed on 04/09/09 Virtualization SME advantages 1. Virtualization and management suite presents a stretchable and low -cost infractment computer programme and an environment with high capability. 2. Virtualization provides the facility to rotate virtual machines that are live between physical hosts. This ability numerous advantages like business c ontinuity, recovery in disaster, balancing of workload, and even energy-savings by permitting running applications to be exchanged between physical servers without disturbing the service. . Virtualization can help you take full advantage of the value of IT Pounds Business alertness in varying markets A flexible IT infrastructure that can scale with business growth High level performance that can lever the majority of demanding applications An industry- hackneyed platform computer architecture with intellectual management tools Servers with enterprise attributesregardless of their size or form factor 4. Virtualization can help you to advance IT services The cooking to maintain the workloads rapidly by setting automatic maintenance process that can be configured to weeks, days or even to inutes. remediate IT responsiveness to business need Down times can be eliminate by shifting the To a great extent decrease, even eliminate unplanned downtime. Reducing costs in technical suppor t, cooking and maintenance. Conclusion This is the right time for Small and mid-sized businesses like InfoTech Solutions to implement a virtualization strategy. Virtualization acts as a significant element of the IT strategy for businesses of all sizes, with a wide range of benefits and advantages for all sized businesses.It helps InfoTech Solutions to construct an IT infrastructure with enterprise-class facilities and with a with a form factor of Return Of Investment. It is expected that more than 80% of organizations will implement virtualization by the end of 2012. So SME organizations like InfoTech Solutions should seriously look in to their E-business strategy for considering the virtualization or they may be left(a) down the competitors. References 1. Adner, Ron (2002). When are Technologies Disruptive? A Demand- Based View of the effect of Competition. Strategic Management Journal 23(8)66788. . Anderson, P. and M. L. Tushman (1990). Technological Discontinuities and Dom inant Designs a alternate(prenominal) Model of Technological-Change. Administrative Science Quarterly 35(4) 604-633. 3. Barham, B. Dragovic, K. Fraser, S. Hand, T. Harris, A. Ho, R. Neugebauer, I. Pratt, and A. Warfield. Xen and the art of virtualization. In Proc. nineteenth SOSP, October 2003. 4. Chesbrough, Henry (1999a). Arrested Development The Experience of European Hard-Disk-Drive Firms in Comparison with U. S. and Nipponese Firms. Journal of Evolutionary Economics 9(3)287329. 5.Chintan Vaishnav , (2008) Does Technology Disruption Always entertain Industry Disruption, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 6. Christensen, Clayton M. (2000). The Innovators Dilemma. When innovative Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail. Boston, MA Harvard Business School Press. 7. Christensen, C. M. (1992). Exploring the limits of technology S-curve architecture Technologies. Production and Operations Management 1(4). 8. Christensen, C. M. and R. S. Rosenbloom (1995). Explaining the Atta ckers Advantage -Technological Paradigms, Organizational Dynamics, and the Value Network. Research Policy 24(2) 233-257. . Christensen, C. M. , F. F. Suarez, et al. (1996). Strategies for survival in fast-changing industries. Cambridge, MA, International Center for Research on the Management 10. Christensen, C. M. (1992). Exploring the limits of technology S-curve Component Technologies. Production and Operations Management 1(4). 11. Christensen, C. M. (1997). The innovators dilemma when new technologies cause great firms to fail. Boston, Mass. , Harvard Business School Press. 12. Christensen, C. M. and M. E. Raynor (2003). The innovators solution creating and sustaining successful growth.Boston, Mass. , Harvard Business School Press. 13. Cohan, Peter S. (2000). The Dilemma of the Innovators Dilemma Clayton Christensens Management Theories Are Suddenly All the Rage, but Are They Ripe for Disruption? Industry Standard, January 10, 2000. 14. Gartner Says http//www. gartner. com/i t/page. jsp? id=638207 accessed on 04/09/09 15. Henderson, R. M. and K. B. Clark (1990). Architectural Innovation the Reconfiguration of exist Product Technologies and the Failure of Established Firms. Administrative Science Quarterly 35(1) 9-30. 16. MacMillan, Ian C. nd McGrath, Rita Gunther (2000). Technology Strategy in Lumpy Market Landscapes. In Wharton on Managing Emerging Technologies. G. S. Day, P. J. H. Schoemaker, and R. E. Gunther (eds. ). New York Wiley, 150171. 17. Scherreik, Susan (2000). When a Guru Manages Money. Business Week, July 31, 2000. 18. L. Peterson, T. Anderson, D. Culler, and T. Roscoe, A radiation diagram for Introducing Disruptive Technology into the Internet, in Proceedings of HotNets I, Princeton, NJ, October 2002. 19. VirtualizationBasics. VMWare. com. http//www. vmware. com/virtualization/ Accessed on 04/09/09Disruptive TechnologyOne of the most consistent embodiments in business is the failure of leadership companies to stay at the top of t heir industries when technologies or markets change. Goodyear and Firestone entered the radial-tire market quite late. bolt let Canon create the small-copier market. Bucyrus-Erie allowed Caterpillar and Deere to take over the mechanical excavator market. Sears gave way to Wal-Mart. The expression of failure has been especially striking in the computer industry. IBM ruled the mainframe market but missed by years the emergence of minicomputers, which were technologically much simpler than mainframes.Digital Equipment dominated the minicomputer market with innovations like its VAX architecture but missed the personal-computer market almost completely. apple Computer led the world of personal computing and established the standard for user-friendly computing but lagged five years behind the leaders in bringing its portable computer to market. Why is it that companies like these invest aggressively-and successfully-in the technologies necessary to retain their current customers but then fail to make certain other technological investments that customers of the future will demand?Undoubtedly, bureaucracy, arrogance, degenerate executive blood, poor planning, and short-term investment horizons have all compete a role. But a more fundamental reason lies at the heart of the paradox leading companies succumb to one of the most popular, and valuable, management dogmas. They stay determination to their customers. Although most managers like to think they are in control, customers wield extraordinary power in directing a companys investments. victorly managers decide to launch a technology, develop a product, build a plant, or establish new channels of distribution, they must look to their customers first Do their customers want it?How braggy will the market be? testament the investment be net profitable? The more astutely managers ask and answer these questions, the more completely their investments will be aligned with the inescapably of their Customers. T his is the way a well-managed company should operate. Right? But what happens when customers reject a new technology, product concept, or way of doing business because it does not address their needs as effectively as a companys current approach? The large photocopying centers that represented the core f Xeroxs customer base at first had no use for small, slow tabletop copiers. The excavation contractors that had relied on Bucyrus-Eries big-bucket steam- and diesel-powered cable shovels didnt want hydraulic excavators because, signly they were small and weak. IBMs large commercial, government, and industrial customers saw no immediate use for minicomputers. In each(prenominal) instance, companies listened to their customers, gave them the product performance they were sounding for, and, in the end, were hurt by the very technologies their customers led them to ignore.We have seen this pattern repeatedly in an ongoing study of leading companies in a variety of industries that have confronted technological change. The research shows that most well-managed, established companies are consistently ahead of their industries in developing and commercializing new technologies- from incremental improvements to radically new approaches- as long as those technologies address the next-generation performance needs of their customers.However, these same companies are rarely in the forefront of commercializing new technologies that dont initially meet the needs of mainstream customers and appeal only to small or rising markets. Using the intellectual, analytical investment processes that most well-managed companies have create, it is n previous(predicate) unimaginable to build a cogent case for diverting resources from known customer needs in established markets to markets and customers that seem insignificant or do not yet exist.After all, meeting the needs of established customers and fending off competitors takes all the resources a company has, and then some. In we ll-managed companies, the processes used to come upon customers needs, forecast technological trends, assess profitability, allocate resources across competing proposals for investment, and take new products to market are focused-for all the right reasons-on current customers and markets. These processes are knowing to weed out proposed products and technologies that do not address customers needs.In fact, the processes and incentives that companies use to keep focused on their main customers work so well that they blind those companies to historic new technologies in emerging markets. Many companies have learned the hard way the perils of ignoring new technologies that do not initially meet the needs of mainstream customers. For example, although personal computers did not meet the requirements of mainstream minicomputer users in the earlier 1980s, the computing power of the desktop machines mproved at a much express rate than minicomputer users demands for computing power did . As a result, personal computers caught up with the computing needs of many a(prenominal) of the customers of Wang, Prime, Nixdorf, Data General, and Digital Equipment. Today they are performance-competitive with minicomputers in many applications. For the minicomputer makers, keeping close to mainstream customers and ignoring what were initially low-performance desktop technologies used by seemingly insignificant customers in emerging markets was a shrewd decision-but one that proved disastrous.The technological changes that damage established companies are ordinarily not radically new or difficult from a technological point of view. They do, however, have two important characteristics First, they typically present a different packet boat of performance attributes- ones that, at least at me outset, are not valued by existing customers. Second, the performance attributes that existing customers do value improve at such a rapid rate that the new technology can later invade those established markets. altogether at this point will mainstream customers want the technology.Unfortunately for the established suppliers, by then it is often too late the pioneers of the new technology dominate the market. It follows, then, that senior executives must first be able to spot the technologies that seem to fall into this category. Next, to commercialize and develop the new technologies, managers must protect them from the processes and incentives that are geared to serving established customers. And the only way to protect them is to create organizations that are completely independent from the mainstream business.No industry of staying too close to customers more dramatically than the hard- record-drive industry. Between 1976 and 1992, disk-drive performance improved at a stunning rate the physical size of a 100-megabyte (MB) system shrank from 5,400 to 8 cubic inches, and the cost per MB fell from $560 to $5. Technological change, of course, drove these exciting ach ievements. About half of the improvement came from a host of radical advances that were particular to continued improvements in disk-drive performance the other half came from incremental advances.The pattern in the disk-drive industry has been repeated in mar/y other industries the leading, established companies have consistently led the industry in developing and adopting new technologies that their customers demanded- even when those technologies required completely different technological competencies and manufacturing capabilities from the ones the companies had. In spite of this aggressive technological posture, no single disk-drive manufacturer has been able to dominate the industry for more than a few years.A series of companies have entered the business and risen to prominence, only to be toppled by newcomers who move technologies that at first did not meet the needs of mainstream customers. As a result, not one of the independent disk-drive companies that existed in 1976 survives today. To explain the differences in the impact of certain kinds of technological innovations on a given industry, the concept of performance trajectories the rate at which the performance of a product has improved, and is expected to improve, over time can be helpful. Almost every industry has a critical performance trajectory.In mechanical excavators, the critical trajectory is the annual improvement in cubic yards of earth moved per minute. In photocopiers, an important performance trajectory is improvement in number of copies per minute. In disk drives, one crucial measure of performance is storage capacity, which has advanced 50% each year on average for a given size of drive. Different types of technological innovations affect performance trajectories in different ways. On the one hand, sustaining technologies tend to maintain a rate of improvement that is, they give customers something more or better in the attributes they already value.For example, thin-film com ponents in disk drives, which replaced conventional ferrite heads and oxide disks between 1982 and 1990, enabled information to be recorded more thickly on disks. Engineers had been pushing the limits of the performance they could wring from ferrite heads and oxide disks, but the drives employing these technologies seemed to have reached the ingrained limits of an S curve. At that point, new thin-film technologies emerged that restored- or sustained-the historical trajectory of performance improvement.On the other hand, disruptive technologies introduce a very different package of attributes from the one mainstream customers historically value, and they often perform far worsened along one or two dimensions that are in particular important to those customers. As a rule, mainstream customers are unwilling to use a disruptive product in applications they know and understand. At first, then, disruptive technologies tend to be used and valued only in new markets or new applications i n fact, they generally make possible the emergence of new markets. For example, Sonys early transistor adios sacrificed sound fidelity but created a market for portable radios by offering a new and different package of attributes- small size, light weight, and portability. In the history of the hard-disk-drive industry, the leaders stumbled at each point of disruptive technological change when the diameter of disk drives shrank from the original 14 inches to 8 inches, then to 5. 25 inches, and finally to 3. 5 inches. individually of these new architectures, initially offered the market substantially less storage capacity than the typical user in the established market required.For example, the 8-inch drive offered 20 MB when it was introduced, while the primary market for disk drives at that time-mainframes-required 200 MB on average. Not strikely, the leading computer manufacturers rejected the 8-inch architecture at first. As a result, their suppliers, whose mainstream products consisted of 14-inch drives with more than 200 MB of capacity, did not pursue the disruptive products aggressively. The pattern was repeated when the 5. 25-inch and 3. 5-inch drives emerged established computer makers rejected the drives as inadequate, and, in turn, their disk-drive suppliers ignored them as well.But while they offered less storage capacity, the disruptive architectures created other important attributes- internal power supplies and smaller size (8-inch drives) still smaller size and low-cost stepper motors (5. 25-inch drives) and ruggedness, light weight, and low-power consumption (3. 5-inch drives). From the late 1970s to the mid-1980s, the availability of the three drives made possible the development of new markets for minicomputers, desktop PCs, and portable computers, respectively. Although the smaller drives represented disruptive technological change, each was technologically straightforward.In fact, there were engineers at many leading companies who champi oned the new technologies and built working(a) prototypes with bootlegged resources before management gave a formal go-ahead. Still, the leading companies could not move the products through their organizations and into the market in a timely way. Each time a disruptive technology emerged, between one-half and two-thirds of the established manufacturers failed to introduce models employing the new architecture-in stark contrast to their timely launches of critical sustaining technologies.Those companies that finally did launch new models typically lagged behind entrant companies by two years-eons in an industry whose products life cycles are often two y. ears. Three waves of entrant companies led these revolutions they first captured the new markets and then dethroned the leading companies in the mainstream markets. How could technologies that were initially inferior and useful only to new markets eventually threaten leading companies in established markets?in one case the disrupti ve architectures became established in their new markets, sustaining innovations raised each architectures performance along steep trajectories- so steep that the performance available from each architecture soon satisfied the needs of customers in the established markets. For example, the 5. 25-inch drive, whose initial 5 MB of capacity in 1980 was only a share of the capacity that the minicomputer market take, became fully performance-competitive in the minicomputer market by 1986 and in the mainframe market by 1991. (See the graph How Disk-Drive Performance Met Market Needs. )A companys revenue and cost structures play a critical role in the way it appraises proposed technological innovations. Generally, disruptive technologies look financially unattractive to established companies. The potential revenues from the discernible markets are small, and it is often difficult to project how big the markets for the technology will be over the long term. As a result, managers typicall y stop that the technology cannot make a meaningful percentage to corporate growth and, therefore, that it is not worth the management effort required to develop it.In addition, established companies have often installed higher cost structures to serve sustaining technologies than those required by disruptive technologies. As a result, managers typically see themselves as having two choices when deciding whether to pursue disruptive technologies. One is to go downmarket and accept the lower profit margins of the emerging markets that the disruptive technologies will initially serve. The other is to go upmarket with sustaining technologies and enter market segments whose profit margins are alluringly high. For example, the margins of IBMs mainframes are still higher than those of PCs).Any rational resource-allocation process in companies serving established markets will choose going upmarket rather than going down. Managers of companies that have championed disruptive technologies in emerging markets look at the world quite differently. Without the high cost structures of their established counterparts, these companies find the emerging markets appealing.Once the companies have secured a foothold in the markets and mproved the performance of their technologies, the established markets above them, served by high-cost suppliers, look appetizing. When they do attack, the entrant companies find the established players to be easy and unprepared opponents because the opponents have been looking upmarket themselves, discounting the threat from below. It is tempting to stop at this point and conclude that a valuable lesson has been learned managers can avoid missing the next wave by paying careful attention to potentially disruptive technologies that do not meet current customers needs.But recognizing the pattern and calculate out how to break it are two different things. Although entrants invaded established markets with new technologies three times in succession, none of the established leaders in the disk-drive industry seemed to learn from the experiences of those that fell before them. Management myopia or lack of foresight cannot explain these failures. The problem is that managers keep doing what has worked in the past tense serving the rapidly growing needs of their current customers.The processes that successful, well-managed companies have developed to allocate resources among proposed investments are incapable of funneling resources into programs that current customers explicitly dont want and whose profit margins seem unattractive. Managing the development of new technology is tightly linked to a companys investment processes. Most strategic proposals-to add capacity or to develop new products or processes- take shape at the lower levels of organizations in engineering groups or project teams. Companies then use analytical planning and budgeting systems to select from among the candidates competing for funds.Proposals to create ne w businesses in emerging markets are particularly challenging to assess because they depend on notoriously unreliable estimates of market size. Because managers are evaluated on their ability to place the right bets, it is not surprising that in well-managed companies, mid- and top-level managers back projects in which the market seems assured. By staying close to lead customers, as they have been trained to do, managers focus resources on fulfilling the requirements of those reliable customers that can be served profitably.Risk is reduced-and careers are safeguarded-by giving known customers what they want. Seagate Technologys experience illustrates the consequences of relying on such resource-allocation processes to evaluate disruptive technologies. By almost any measure, Seagate, based in Scotts Valley, California, was one of the most successful and aggressively managed companies in the history of the microelectronics industry from its inception in 1980, Seagates revenues had gro wn to more than $700 million by 1986.It had pioneered 5. 5-inch hard-disk drives and was the main supplier of them to IBM and IBM-compatible personal-computer manufacturers. The company was the leading manufacturer of 5. 25-inch drives at the time the disruptive 3. 5-inch drives emerged in the mid-1980s. Engineers at Seagate were the second in the industry to develop working prototypes of 3. 5-inch drives. By early 1985, they had made more than 80 such models with a low level of company funding. The engineers forwarded the new models to key merchandise executives, and the flock press reported that Seagate was actively developing 3. -inch drives. But Seagates principal customers- IBM and other manufacturers of AT-class personal computers- showed no interest in the new drives.They wanted to desegregate 40-MB and 60-MB drives in their next-generation models, and Seagates early 3. 5-inch prototypes packed only 10 MB. In response, Seagates marketing executives lowered their sales fore casts for the new disk drives. Manufacturing and financial executives at the company pointed out another drawback to the 3. 5-inch drives. According to their analysis, the new drives would never be competitive with the 5. 5-inch architecture on a cost-per-megabyte basis-an important metric that Seagates customers used to evaluate disk drives. Given Seagates cost structure, margins on the higher-capacity 5. 25-inch models therefore promised to be much higher than those on the smaller products.Senior managers quite rationally distinct that the 3. 5-inch drive would not provide the sales volume and profit margins that Seagate postulate from a new product. A former Seagate marketing executive recalled, We needed a new model that could become the next ST412 a 5. 5-inch drive generating more than $300 million in annual sales, which was nearing the end of its life cycle. At the time, the entire market for 3. 5-inch drives was less than $50 million. The 3. 5-inch drive just didnt fit the bill- for sales or profits. The shelving of the 3. 5-inch drive was not a signal that Seagate was complacent about innovation. Seagate subsequently introduced new models of 5. 25-inch drives at an accelerated rate and, in so doing, introduced an impressive array of sustaining technological improvements, even though introducing them rendered a significant portion of its manufacturing capacity obsolete.