Disruptive Technologies Harvard Business School professor Clayton M. Christensen first used the term disruptive technology in his 1997 book The Innovator’s Dilemma. Christensen separated emerging technologies into two categories: sustaining and disruptive. Sustaining technology relied on incremental improvements to an already-established technology, while a disruptive technology was one that displaced an established technology. A disruptive technology also had the potential to transform an industry or develop a novel product to create a completely new industry.
