The conventional view of disruptive innovation as a series of cumulative advances that results in a new value proposition is incomplete. It does not account for the uncertainties surrounding an invention’s technology, ecosystem, and business model. To factor those in and understand the trajectory and impact of a disruptive value proposition, innovators must ask themselves five critical questions.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review Article. When faced with an emerging technology, many companies have trouble responding - not because they don't recognize how it impacts their business, but because they have difficulty managing the uncertainty around the new technology's competitive viability. And when the technology significantly disrupts the company's existing business, it can create structural impediments to pursuing opportunities.

Why do some transformative technologies dominate the market quickly, while others take decades to catch on? It's a function not just of the technologies themselves, say the authors, but also of their broader ecosystems (electric cars, for example, need a network of charging stations). The ecosystems of the legacy technologies matter too--they can sometimes be improved enough to prolong the life of the old technology. Analyzing the ecosystem dynamics in your industry can help you predict how quickly technological change will occur. For example, if the new technology is surrounded by viable complements and there's little room to improve the old technology's ecosystem, substitution is rapid ("creative destruction"). When the opposite conditions hold--the new technology's ecosystem needs work and the old technology can capitalize on improvements in the established ecosystem--the pace of substitution is very slow ("robust resilience"). The authors describe two other possible scenarios: "robust coexistence" of the two technologies, and the "illusion of resistance" (the old technology seems competitive for some time but quickly succumbs once the new technology's ecosystem is ready to roll). If you understand which scenario applies to you, you can better assess the threat of disruptive change--and use the authors' insights to respond effectively.