Clayton M. Christensen
Great companies fail not by making poor decisions, but by doing everything right - listening to their best customers and chasing high profit margins while simpler, cheaper technologies quietly dismantle their core market.
Sustaining innovations improve current product performance for existing high-margin customers, whereas disruptive innovations introduce simpler, lower-margin alternatives that initially serve only fringe markets.
Value networks dictate resource allocation, causing well-managed firms to reject disruptive technologies because their cost structures and customer demands prioritize immediate profit and growth.
Customer dependence traps incumbents into ignoring early disruptive threats, as resource allocation processes naturally discard products that existing buyers do not actively request.