Once a spin-off is economically successful, folding it into the mainstream organization where fixed cost resources can be shared across all the businesses can work with sustaining technologies. With disruptive technologies this approach can be disastrous. In the history of the disk-drive business every company that tried to manage mainstream and disruptive businesses within a single organization failed. Regardless of the industry, a corporation consists of business units with finite life spans. The technological and market base of any business will eventually disappear.
Disruptive technologies are part of that cycle.
Companies that understand the process can create new businesses to replace the ones that will inevitably die. Managers of disruptive innovation must be given free-reign to realize the technology s potential, even if it means killing the company s mainstream business. If the corporation doesn t kill them off themselves, competitors will.