Big Bang Disruption

How Innovations Become Better And Cheaper

In this Forbes article, the authors Paul Nunes and Larry Downes expand on the idea of disruptive innovation and talk about Big Bang Disruption. The key difference between the two is that Big Bang disruption does not follow conventional strategic paths or normal patterns of market adoption. Big bang disruptions experience dramatic market adoption right off the bat and cause unintended collateral damage to incumbent businesses. The defining characteristic of a Big Bang Disruption is that from the moment of introduction, it is better and cheaper than the traditional product and services it replaces, and leads to sudden abandonment of the old for the new. One example that they use throughout the article is the smartphone and how it disrupted books, video cameras, papers, wristwatches, cash registers, day timers, wallets, keys, newspapers and magazines, pocket calculators, and many more. Can you think of any other products that resulted in Big Bang Disruption?