MGMT 8805M Week 11 Closing Case Example

A Partial Disruption, Judged on Evidence Dated Before the Outcome: A Closing Case on Handheld Ultrasound and a Cart Incumbent That Lays Out the Record Before the Theory, Reports the Conditions That Failed Alongside Those That Held and Answers Two Named Critiques

Student Name

Walden University

MGMT 8805M: Agile and Disruptive Innovation Management

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

A Partial Disruption, Judged on Evidence Dated Before the Outcome: A Closing Case on Handheld Ultrasound and a Cart Incumbent That Lays Out the Record Before the Theory, Reports the Conditions That Failed Alongside Those That Held and Answers Two Named Critiques

Abstract

This case examines how Pocketsound's handheld ultrasound probe took the emergency department and primary care tiers from Brightwater Medical Imaging between 2019 and 2025, both composite firms. Using only evidence dated before each outcome, it finds that three of disruption theory's four conditions held fully and one held partly, and that the theory explains the entry and the incumbent's delay but not why the advance stopped below diagnostic imaging.

The Record

[after]

Every source in the right column was written before the event that followed it, so the record does not depend on hindsight.

Table 1

Timeline of Entry and Response, 2019 to 2025

Conditions Revisited

The Week 2 conditions table found fit on the entrant's inferior start, its entry with nonconsumers and the incumbent's weak motive to respond, and partial fit on improvement to mainstream adequacy. Three more years of evidence leave that verdict intact. The handheld became adequate for bedside checks in emergency, anesthesia and some obstetric uses, but cardiology and radiology have not moved. The business model comparison found that the profit formula, subscription against capital sale, carried the entrant's advantage, and the adoption analysis found that professional credentialing delayed adoption by about eighteen months.

The First Critique: How Cases Are Chosen

Lepore (2014) questioned the canonical disruption cases, arguing that several were selected or described in ways that fit the theory better than the full record allowed. This case answers that critique in two ways. It admits only evidence dated before the outcome it explains, and it reports the condition that held only partly rather than rounding it up. A case built only from sources written after the outcome invites the selective storytelling the critique describes.

The Second Critique: Before or After

Danneels (2004) asked whether disruptiveness can be identified in advance or only after the outcome. The March 2021 staff memo is the case's evidence on this question: it predicted that Pocketsound would take the emergency tier and recommended a separate unit before that happened. The prediction came true for the emergency tier. But the same memo's implied projection, that the handheld would continue upward, has not yet come true for cardiology. The theory supported a correct prediction one step ahead and an uncertain one two steps ahead. That is a modest record, but it is a record made in advance, which is what the critique asked for.

What the Theory Did Not Explain

Disruption theory does not explain why the advance stopped below diagnostic imaging. Two explanations fall outside it. Diagnostic scans carry liability that bedside checks do not, and hospitals require images archived to standards a handheld met only in 2024. In addition, Tushman and Anderson (1986) found that competence-destroying changes are often resisted by those whose skills they devalue; here that resistance came from radiologists, as the adoption analysis showed, not from the incumbent firm. The theory, as Christensen and Raynor (2003) set it out, focuses on firms and customers, and has less to say about professions that control who may use a technology.

Verdict

Pocketsound's entry was a partial disruption: it fit the theory's conditions in the tiers where it succeeded and stopped where professional and regulatory barriers rose. Christensen et al. (2018) called for applying the theory's conditions strictly, and doing so here produces a narrower claim than calling the case a disruption outright.

What Would Change the Verdict

If cardiology departments begin replacing carts with handhelds for routine scans by 2028, the case would become a full disruption, and the barriers described above would have proven temporary. If instead Brightwater's own handheld wins back emergency departments from Pocketsound by 2027, the case would read less as disruption than as a delayed but successful incumbent response, which the theory treats as rare and which would deserve its own study.

References

Christensen, C. M., McDonald, R., Altman, E. J., & Palmer, J. E. (2018). Disruptive innovation: An intellectual history and directions for future research. Journal of Management Studies, 55(7), 1043-1078. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12349

Christensen, C. M., & Raynor, M. E. (2003). The innovator's solution: Creating and sustaining successful growth. Harvard Business School Press.

Danneels, E. (2004). Disruptive technology reconsidered: A critique and research agenda. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 21(4), 246-258. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0737-6782.2004.00076.x

Lepore, J. (2014, June 23). The disruption machine: What the gospel of innovation gets wrong. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/06/23/the-disruption-machine

Tushman, M. L., & Anderson, P. (1986). Technological discontinuities and organizational environments. Administrative Science Quarterly, 31(3), 439-465. https://doi.org/10.2307/2392832