── ── Startups
Disruptive Innovation
Most incumbents fail not because they make bad decisions, but because they make good ones. Clayton Christensen found that leading firms listened to their best customers, invested in high-margin segments, and were displaced anyway. The pattern: incumbents overshoot mainstream customer needs, creating a price window at the low end that a new entrant can enter profitably — and the incumbent…
Run Disruptive Innovation on a real problem
Bring something you're actually deciding — free, in the browser.
How it works
Run the Disruption Assessment. Identify the structural conditions, then map the attacker path.
1. Map performance-price landscape. List major incumbents, customers, performance, price. Is any incumbent providing performance clearly beyond what mainstream customers use? If yes — overshooting is present. 2. Find ignored segments. (a) Low-end: who pays for performance they don't use? (b) Non-consumption: who is blocked by price/complexity/access? Name them specifically. 3. Define "good enough" for entry. Which dimensions are necessary vs. removable? Cost savings from removal fund the lower price. MVP = target segment's needs, not incumbent feature parity. 4. Analyze rational neglect. Why won't the incumbent follow? Cannibalization of high-margin customers? Cost structure makes low-end unprofitable? Sales force incentives anchored on premium accounts? If no structural barrier exists, the disruption window is narrow. 5. Map upward migration path. Sketch product roadmap from entry to mainstream. Confirm the path exists — permanently low-end = niche, not disruption. 6. Stop-rule. Christensen's three conditions: (a) inferior on mainstream metrics? (b) low-end or non-consumer target? (c) incumbent has rational reason not to compete? All three must pass — otherwise label accurately.
When to use it
- a founder asks 'can we avoid competing head-on with big players?', someone asks 'is this disruption or just a price war?', an investor wonders if a startup's entry angle creates durable structural advantage, an incumbent spots a cheap new entrant and needs to know if it's a real threat, a product team wants to know which features to deliberately leave out of an MVP
When not to use it
When the decision is routine and reversible, applying a formal method costs more than it returns.
Worked example
AI Agents vs. Seat-Based SaaS (2023–2026)
A live, unfinished case — useful precisely because the arc has not fully run, so the framework is doing diagnostic rather than post-hoc work. After ChatGPT's late-2022 launch, a wave of AI-native "agent" tools began attacking established SaaS categories (customer support, coding, sales, marketing copy, analytics). The interesting question is not "is AI big" — it obviously is — but whether the attack is genuine disruption (structural, with rational incumbent neglect) or sustaining innovation the incumbents will simply absorb. Run the six steps and the…
Install this skill (free, MIT)
npx skills add deciqAI/knowledge-skillsUseful? Star the repo — stars help other builders find it.
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