What is the difference between sustaining and disruptive tec

What is the difference between sustaining and disruptive technology? How do they relate to the concept of electronic business value?

Solution

Sustaining technologies improve the performance of established products, along the dimensions of performance that mainstream customers in major markets have historically valued. Most technological advances in a given industry are sustaining in character.

Disruptive technologies bring to a market a very different value proposition than had been available previously. Generally, disruptive technologies underperform established products in mainstream markets. But they have other features that a few fringe (and generally new) customers value. Products based on disruptive technologies are typically cheaper, simpler, and, frequently, more convenient to use.

First off Disruptive vs Sustaining is a spectrum.

eCommerce leans towards sustaining, Clayton Christensen covers this in the Innovators Solution.

eCommerce at first seems to be disruptive to traditional brick and mortar retailers. However to companies like Dell and other mail-order catalogue distributors it was sustaining and a natural extension of their core business. They were able to use the new channel to offer a more convenient option for their existing high-end customers that demanded better performance.

Since one of the qualifications for something to be disruptive is everyone must consider it disruptive for it to be disruptive that makes eCommerce a sustaining technology.