In 1997, the hard disk drive market was four decades old, and mostly defined by two factors: speed and capacity. Customers, industry journals, and scientists mostly talked about technical innovations that would deliver faster spinning disks with higher storage capacities. The assumption was that market demand grew on mostly two axes. Folks did not talk about much else.
And for good reason. Already, whole generations of computer storage companies had competed against each other and failed. In June of that year, Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen published his now-legendary book The Innovator’s Dilemma — which introduced the world to the theory of ‘disruptive innovation’. In Chapter 1, Christensen wrote: “If you want to understand why something happens in business, study the disk drive industry. Those companies are the closest things to fruit flies that the business world will ever see.” What he meant was that hard disk drive companies were subjected to unrelenting, pervasive, rapid changes in technology, market structure, global scope and vertical integration. He meant that competition in this industry was fierce, unlike “anywher ...
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