I also felt that the iPhone was a disruptive product. But it took this article to help me articulate the reasons why. In all of Christensen's examples cited i

I also felt that the iPhone was a disruptive product. But it took this article to help me articulate the reasons why. In all of Christensen's examples cited in “The Innovator’s Solution”, the incumbents tended to move upmarket at the time the disruption was introduced. In the case of the cellphone industry, the incumbents were moving downmarket. This is important because it shows that a company wanting to disrupt an industry needs to position themselves at the opposite end of the prevailing market direction. But simply zagging while the industry is zigging isn't enough - the disrupting company also needs to employ the appropriate strategy at the same time. Hence, if your disruption is targeted to the cheap end of the market, then Christensen's "good enough" strategy is absolutely the correct one. But, if your disruption is targeted to the high end of the market, as Apple's iPhone was, then you better be offering a degree of quality that no one dreamed of offering. This kind of deflates Christensen's compelling rhetoric somewhat. Before Christensen's books, conventional marketing was that in order to succeed, you should see where the industry is headed, and track in the opposite direction. Position yourself against your competitors, not be like them.