What is disruption? Simply explained!

You may have heard or read the term ‘disruption’ in connection with new technologies. We reveal to you the meaning behind the term.

Disruption: This is what the term means

In common parlance, the word ‘disruption’ is used to refer to a serious change. The term comes from English, where it means something like disruption, interruption or even shaking.

• In German, the term is often used in connection with economic issues and means that a previously dominant technology is displaced from the market by a new one.
• But not only technologies, but also systems, ways of thinking and procedures, services or products can be affected by such a drastic change.
• Disruptive technologies are when an innovation is so radical that it challenges and ends the previously unchallenged supremacy of a product or technology.
• A disruptive service would be, for example, the online platform Airbnb, whose innovative way of booking and renting accommodation has triggered existential fears in the hotel industry in many places.
• Also with a view to Amazon, one can speak of a disruptive potential: With fast delivery times, free shipping and an almost endless range of different products, the company poses a threat to analogue trade.
• Examples of disruptions from the past are DVDs, flat screens or digital cameras: DVDs have displaced the VHS, flat screens the tube TV, and digital cameras have banished analogue photography to the darkrooms of connoisseurs.