This seems to be another way of describing disruption (and I like it): Companies serve their customers. They improve their product along a dimension that their

This seems to be another way of describing disruption (and I like it): Companies serve their customers. They improve their product along a dimension that their customers want. Equivalent to your "weakness" - as soon as their customers care about this, they work hard to fix it. If you create an alternative product for those very same customers (and for the very same use) that's not as good in that dimension, they won't buy it. If it's better on that dimension (a sustaining innovation), the incumbents will work hard to beat it - and historically, they usually will, as they have all kinds of advantages over you. But if you build for different customers, who currently have nothing, they will be delighted, and the incumbent won't care because you don't threaten their customers. Now, usually such a product will have other benefits that the competitor's product lacks - at the very least, a cheaper price, but maybe also convenience, flexibility, customizability, simplicity etc. This benefit is usually a result of a tradeoff against the above dimension - a "drawback". Over time, you naturally will improve your product, and (perhaps) it will approach being good enough to threaten that competitor. But even as they see you approach, they really can't fight you, because it would require they let down their customers. And, what's even worse, at this new way of doing things, you are now the incumbent, with all the experience with engineering, customer acquisition and business model etc, and they are the entrant. But I think you add a new idea to disruption, that the "drawback" is incompatible with the value proposition, as opposed to being orthogonal. Different business models are often like that; also many engineering tradeoffs. It's exacerbated by when you improve at something, you often specialize in it; and specialization in one thing implies de-specialization in something else. Note that such incompatibilities are not restricted to engineering issues: if Apple somehow became dependent on tethering, or on iPad users requiring an Apple desktop, as part of their business model, it would then become a "drawback", that you could attack on.