無意中聽到有人談論蘋果、特斯拉和優步如何顛覆各自的市場，讓我想起了電影《安妮?霍爾》中的一個場景（如上圖所示）：在爭論馬歇爾?麥克盧漢的冷媒和熱媒理論時，伍迪?艾倫動用殺手锏——他求助于這一理論最高權威，即麥克盧漢本尊。

麥克盧漢對艾倫扮演的角色，一個自命不凡的哥倫比亞大學學者說道：“你對我的作品一無所知。你能在什么都不懂的情況下講授一門課，真是令人吃驚。”

現在站在舞臺中央的是克萊頓?克里斯坦森。在《創新者的窘境》（The Innovator’s Dilemma，1997）、《創新者的解答》（The Innovator’s Solution，2013，與邁克爾?雷納合著）這兩部具有開創意義的著作中，這位哈佛商學院王牌教授向大眾普及了顛覆性創新理論。

他告訴批評者，尤其是《紐約客》，以及一大批擁護者，他們當中的絕大多數對自己的作品一無所知。

在《哈佛商業評論》12月的一篇文章中，克里斯坦森、雷納和洛里?麥克唐納，給顛覆性創新的概念劃清了界限。

他們試圖重申他們在近20年前展現給世界的這一想法：“盡管得到了廣泛傳播，但這一理論的核心概念被大量誤解，其基本原理常常被誤用。”

顛覆性創新的基本原理是什么？我盡可能簡要地概括出三個必要條件：

1. 有一家生機勃勃的小型初創公司采用了一種新型商業模式與巨頭正面競爭。

2. 有一群新的低端消費者，它們要么被現有公司過度服務（這些公司總想取悅最好的客戶），要么根本沒有得到服務。

3. 某種科技促進因素，讓這家小企業掌握了某些優勢，得以進入高端市場。等到巨頭們發現小企業的威脅時，已經太晚了。

這些是必要條件。如果沒有同時滿足這三條，就不具備科技上的顛覆性。

至少，創造該理論的人是這么說的。

按照他們的標準，蘋果、特斯拉和優步都不符合要求。

蘋果在發布iPhone時不能算是一家生機勃勃的初創公司。

特斯拉是一家初創公司，但他們是從高端市場進軍汽車業的。

優步的市場既不新，也沒有被過度服務。你沒有聽到過乘客會抱怨出租車太快或是座椅太舒適。

顛覆式創新的理論家們認為，這三家公司只是想出了招徠顧客的更好方式。他們利用了現有市場，把事情做得更好。

那么什么才是顛覆式創新？顛覆式創新長什么樣？維基百科提供了一個有用的例子：

“汽車不屬于顛覆性創新，因為早期的汽車是高端的奢侈品，并未顛覆馬車市場。運輸市場本質上沒有受到沖擊，直到1908年廉價的福特Model T推出。這種大批量生產的汽車屬于顛覆性創新，因為它改變了運輸市場，而汽車面世的前30年并沒有做到這一點。”

你可能會問，那有什么區別？使用什么術語真的那么重要？

克里斯坦森的團隊認為這非常重要。這個概念原本出自計算機磁盤驅動器市場的創新，它不僅是一個理論，還是一種在創新頻繁，市場變動劇烈時期管理企業的訣竅。

他們寫道：“必須正確運用這一理論，才能體現出它的好處。你很可能不必在意那些侵蝕你邊緣業務的小型競爭者——只有他們處于顛覆性創新的模式下，才可能造成致命的威脅。”

了解這一區別可能很重要。（財富中文網）

譯者：嚴匡正

審校：任文科

Overhearing people talk about how Apple, Tesla, and Uber disrupted their respective markets, I’m reminded of that scene in Annie Hall, pictured above, where Woody Allen settles an argument about Marshall McLuhan’s theories of hot and cool media by turning to the highest authority at hand—McLuhan himself, dragged in from offstage.

“You know nothing of my work,” says McLuhan to Allen’s foil, a pretentious academic from Columbia University. “How you ever got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing.”

Enter, stage left, Clayton Christensen. He’s the Harvard professor who popularized the theory of disruptive innovation in two seminal works: The Innovator’s Dilemma (1997) and, with Michael Raynor, The Innovator’s Solution (2013).

He’s here to tell both his critics (notably in the New Yorker) and his admirers that most of them know nothing of his work.

In an article in the December issue of the Harvard Business Review, Christensen and Raynor have, with Rory McDonald, drawn a line in the sand. On one side is disruptive innovation. On the other is everything else.

“Despite broad dissemination,” they write, trying to re-take control of a powerful idea they loosed on the world nearly 20 year ago, “the theory’s core concepts have been widely misunderstood and its basic tenets frequently misapplied.”

What are those basic tenets? Putting it as simply as I can, there are three necessary conditions:

There’s a small, scrappy start-up that is taking on the big guys with a new business model.

There’s a new class of low-end customers who are either over-served by established companies (that are always trying to please their best customers) or not being served at all.

There’s a technological accelerant that gives the little guy an edge he can use to move up-market. By the time the big guys realize they’re in danger, it’s already too late.

These are necessary conditions. If you don’t have all three, you don’t have technological disruption.

Or so say the guys who created the theory.

And by their measure, Apple, Tesla, and Uber don’t fit the bill.

Apple was hardly a scrappy start-up when it introduced the iPhone.

Tesla was a startup, but it entered the car business from the high end.

Uber’s market is neither new nor over-served. You don’t hear many taxi customers complaining that their cab came too fast or the ride was too comfortable.

All three companies, the disruption theorists argue, merely built better mousetraps. They took existing markets and made things better .

So what IS a disruptive innovation? What does THAT look like? Wikipedia offers a useful example:

“The automobile was not a disruptive innovation, because early automobiles were expensive luxury items that did not disrupt the market for horse-drawn vehicles. The market for transportation essentially remained intact until the debut of the lower-priced Ford Model T in 1908. The mass-produced automobile was a disruptive innovation, because it changed the transportation market, whereas the first thirty years of automobiles did not.”

By now you are probably asking what difference it makes. Does it matter what terms we use?

Team Christensen argues that it does. The ideas, drawn originally from a study of innovation in the computer disk drive market, offer not just a theory, but prescriptions for management in a time of great innovation and market upheaval.

“Applying the theory correctly is essential to realizing its benefits,” they write. “Small competitors that nibble away at the periphery of your business very likely should be ignored—unless they are on a disruptive trajectory, in which case they are a potentially mortal threat.”

Knowing the difference probably matters.