*>at a price point that doesn't really seem any better.* $70/mo for *gigabit...

dkrich · on July 27, 2012

"This is the very definition of disruption."

Is that a fact? My interpretation of the Christensen version of disruption (which I'm told is pretty much official since he wrote the book on it- literally) is when a company offers a minimal version of a product, usually much cheaper than those offered by the incumbents that are better than those offerings only on one or two dimensions. Usually these are things like consuming less power or simply costing less. Eventually these products become good enough on the other dimensions while maintaining the original value proposition that they "disrupt" the incumbents from the bottom. This is why the book is about things like hard drives, steam shovels, cell phone cameras, and minimills.

You might want to double-check next time before making such a bold statement. It seems here that you are declaring the definition of a term without having even a tenuous understanding of what it is.

Clearly attacking the market with a superior product at a price point that is more expensive than what you can currently buy is not a disruption. Offering a better product than what's currently available isn't disruption, it's innovation.

deveac · on Aug 1, 2012

>Is that a fact? My interpretation of the Christensen version of disruption (which I'm told is pretty much official since he wrote the book on it- literally)

His definition of disruptive technologies actually appeared first in his article: Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave. The book you are thinking of is 'The Innovator's Dilemma' in which he expounds further on the topic he introduced in Catching the Wave.

At any rate:

>Disruptive technology typically improves in a way that by being lower priced and designed for various disciplines of consumers. [2] Instead of allowing consumers with lots of money or lots of skills to use it, disruptive technology is designed in which allow “whole new population of consumers” to use it, access its services. [3]

I'd say that Google's service falls squarely within this definition. Not only to a 't' on the pricing end, but the packaged technologies certainly opens up a 'whole new population of consumers' to using it based on attributes besides cost. They are packaging wifi distribution and cloud storage together, along with mega-high throughput on the data speed end. They are taking this directly to a whole new population of consumers (the general consumer market). This market did not affordable access to this technology previously.