You can’t devote much time to reading print-related media these days without being inundated by the word disruption.I had been studiously avoiding the word, despite the lack of satisfying synonyms, until I ran across an excellent article by Rita Gunther McGrath in the MIT Sloan Management Review.

In “The New Disrupters,” McGrath describes a shift in the role of disrupters. Traditionally, disrupters have been companies that enter on the fringes of an incumbent’s business with a product or service that is cheaper and more convenient, but without the same level of quality or features as the incumbent’s offer. The new disrupters, by contrast, may enter the incumbent’s market with products that offer the trifecta of cheaper, more convenient, and high quality. While McGrath’s article focuses on the impact of digital (meaning online), the shift also applies to digital inkjet.

The transaction printing segment experienced classic disruption a decade ago from production inkjet products that entered the market slowly and focused on cost reduction and convenience. The color quality wasn’t comparable with full-color toner or with the offset shells that inkjet displaced, but the cost and convenience benefits outweighed quality concerns. Inkjet OEMs continued to innovate, and eventually came to dominate the transaction printing market, while advancing quality to enable entry into parallel markets.