Disruptive innovation is a term that was first coined in 1995 by Harvard Business
School Professors Clayton Christensen and Joseph Bower and explains how “a
market or sector is transformed by introducing simplicity, convenience, accessibility
and affordability where complication and high cost are the status quo.” For the most
part, when people think about disruptive innovation, technology is the first thing that
comes to mind — smartphones, flat-screen TVs, MP3 players — things that have
come on the market that have totally replaced products that we had and make us
think “how did we ever live without this wonderful machine”.

But disruption can be so much more than just a better way to listen to music.
Disruptive innovation can be found in both products and processes — i.e. how we
do something is just as disruptive to the status quo as the new technology that
enables us to do it. Going back to the advent of the ATM machine, both the
technology itself was disruptive, but so was the process — we no longer had to go
to a bank to deposit a check or withdraw cash. In this same vein, mobile phones as
a technology were disruptive to fixed telephony, but the ability to conduct banking
transactions and to pay for goods and services over this new technology is a
change in process that has disrupted many industries....