Disruptive Technologies in the CMS Market

There was a great profile on Clayton Christensen in the New Yorker recently. I had read his groundbreaking book Innovator’s Dilemma when it came out about a decade ago.

In that book, Mr. Christensen talks about how new companies spring up in existing sectors with disruptive technologies. They often start at the bottom of the market by being good enough to solve the core problem quickly and cheaply. Then, as these disruptive companies mature, they slowly chip away, higher-and-higher up the food chain, until they are applying a superior approach to an old problem at the high-end of the market and eventually push out the old guard entirely.

I loved Christensen when we started the company and somehow haven’t thought about him in some time. Mr. Christensen, of course, accurately predicted the path Crownpeak has taken from being disruptive in the mid-sized businesses we had as early customers and slowly moving up-market until we have become the first SaaS company pushing the old-guard of highly sophisticated and specialized products out of the way with an improved (disruptive) technology.

Now we need to keep our eye on the new lower-end entrants or we will be the company getting disrupted in 5 or 10 years!