Why Twitter is a Disruptive Innovation

It's hard to escape the Twitter publicity storm.  Celebrities are now coming in droves to what was a geek-driven network. One question worth asking is...why now?  What's different? Aren't email, IM, chat, Skype, blogging, social networking (now with email) and other the other forms of rapid fire communication enough?

In short, no. I had a chance to look again at the Innovators Dilemma by Clayton Christensen.  He describes a Disruptive Innovation as a process by which a product or service takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves ‘up market', eventually displacing established competitors.

An innovation that is disruptive allows a whole new population of consumers access to a product or service that was historically only accessible to consumers with a lot of money or a lot of skill. Characteristics of disruptive businesses, at least in their initial stages, can include: lower gross margins, smaller target markets, and simpler products and services that may not appear as attractive as existing solutions when compared against traditional performance metrics.

Why didn't blogging companies (like SixApart) develop Twitter?  Because they were busy serving ever growing needs of bloggers who right long form entries.

How about IM vendors? Chat? Facebook? Facebook was building its app platform at the same time Twitter was building a seemingly bare bones system for sharing a stream of short messages. Now Facebook has to respond to Twitter's incredible success with developers.

Because companies tend to innovate faster than their customers' lives change, most organizations eventually end up producing products or services that are too good, too expensive, and too inconvenient for many customers. By only pursuing “sustaining innovations” that perpetuate what has historically helped them succeed, companies unwittingly open the door to “disruptive innovations”.

It may be that incumbents...themselves in many cases only a few years old...will respond with innovation of their own and catch up to Twitter's momentum.  I'm not betting on it.