New technologies emerge in a far shorter time span than ever before in the history of mankind. While many of these technologies are incremental improvements over what is already available, others completely break from the pattern and redefine entire industries, change our mode of thinking about something, or just introduce new concepts to our knowledge bank.

In his 1997 best-selling book, "The Innovator’s Dilemma," Harvard Business School professor Clayton M. Christensen segregates new technology into two categories: sustaining and disruptive. Sustaining technology relies on incremental improvements to an already established technology, while Disruptive technology is new, and unexpectedly displaces an established technology. By its very nature, disruptive technologies lack refinement, often have performance problems because these are new, appeal to a rather limited audience, and may not yet have a proven practical application.

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