Think a disruptive innovation succeeds because it outperforms current solutions?
Think again: It often underperforms on existing criteria. The key to its success is that it introduces new criteria where it makes a difference.
Imagine your ordeal if you were an automobile pioneer at the end of the 19th century. Repeated breakdowns, flat tires, the difficulty of driving a complex machine on roads that were not at all suitable. And just when you’ve broken down, parked as best you can on the side of a muddy road, a horseman rides by and gives you a sly look. With reliable, high-performance technology, at least he’ll be home to warm up in a few minutes.
But why invest in cars if you’re going to suffer the consequences of their poor performance? This is one of the mysteries of disruptive innovation: contrary to popular belief, its initial performance is often far inferior to that of the dominant technology. The first ballpoint pens leaked easily, the first digital cameras had very low resolution, the first machine translation tools like Google Translate produced mediocre results that had to be reworked, and so on. In short, disruptive innovation always seems “inferior” to the dominant technology. So why does it succeed?
The triumph of underperformance
The automobile is a triumph of underperformance because, although it is inferior in the dominant performance criteria, it introduces new criteria in which it dominates current technology. Unlike the horse, the automobile doesn’t need time to rest or eat, it can carry several people and very heavy loads, it can have a roof to protect it from the elements, etc. But above all, it solves a fundamental problem: the lack of a car. But above all, it solves a fundamental problem that threatened all cities: excrement.
In fact, at the end of the 19th century, the one hundred and fifty thousand horses that transported people and goods through the streets of Manhattan, for example, produced 45,000 tons (!) of manure and thousands of liters of urine per month, which, in addition to the smell, posed obvious hygienic and logistical problems for disposal. The emerging automobile was an obvious answer to this challenge. Its unreliability was not a problem in the city, where there was always a mechanic nearby. The result: by 1915, the number of carriages in New York exceeded the number of horses, and the dystopian visions of mountains of manure and rivers of urine that traumatized city officials were forgotten.
The poor performance of disruptive technologies on existing criteria explains why they are often rejected, not least by the players in the field (the rider in the countryside riding by, laughing). Good performance on new criteria (no droppings), on the other hand, opens up possibilities for new uses and thus new users, such as urban transport.
From an adoption point of view, this means two things: on the one hand, the fact that they have no alternative explains why new adopters (in this case, cities) can settle for mediocre quality on the dominant criterion (in this case, reliability). For them, it’s all or nothing! For city dwellers (and city governments), the automobile represents a significant improvement in transportation performance. In the countryside, on the other hand, the car’s unreliability and unsuitability for agricultural tasks represent a deterioration in their experience. So, logically, they reject it. It wasn’t until the 1940s that the agricultural version of the automobile, the tractor, was widely adopted by American farmers. This explains why incumbents conclude that disruptive technology is not of interest to them. In doing so, they leave the door open to new entrants who base their development on the new criteria. Famously, it wasn’t the carriage makers who became car makers.
Bet on underperformance
Never judge a new technology by the standards of its predecessor. If we wait for it to reach the (supposed) perfection of current technology, we risk depriving ourselves of its potential, or allowing it to be exploited by others. We shouldn’t compare it to an ideal, but to the alternatives that actually exist. In a sense, you have to accept your underperformance against the current criteria and bet on the new criteria and the possibilities they open up.
🔎 The source of this article about horses in New York here.
🇫🇷 A version in French of this article is available here.
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