re: “disruptive competitive paces”
I think the point of the article is about disruptive technologies that relegate the slackers to the dustbin of yesterday’s innovations.
SSDs don't strike me as a good example of the phenomenon Christensen identified.
Just as flat screens are better than CRTs, SSDs are better than rotating media. But just as the industry took a while to learn to make flat screens more cheaply than CRTs, it also took a while to learn to make SSDs work cost effectively. SSDs are fantastically complicated technology. Both SSDs and flat screens are further down the natural learning curve. Jobs may deserve some credit for early recognition of the value of SSDs and high-resolution flat touchscreens, but then he always had expensive tastes and the will to make same sufficiently affordable to use in his products.
Christensen's phenomenon lies at a higher level than normal technological evolution. It is a mechanism by which the market adjusts to new possibilities afforded by technological progress. It applies, for example, to the recognition that you can use a smart phone or tablet to perform a certain significant fraction of what you used to do on your desktop or laptop. That's basic business sense, but obvious only in retrospect. Flat screens and SSDs are enablers for that. But it took vision to recognize the opportunities afforded by the technological progress and energy to realize them. Jobs obviously deserves a lot of credit.
Actually, the article's main thrust is to criticize Seagate for trying to delay the inevitable (success of SSDs) in 2010. So, I suppose that is a valid, but narrow, example of Christensen's principle.
And the ultimate question is which ones are the ones that emerge when their are multiple advances and which ones fail. The old Beta-Max vs VHS, etc etc. Another one is CVT transmissions. I know of one firm that invested heavily in it only to have no consumer enthusiasm and no volume so they canned it. Imagine if the Boeing 747 was not accepted and became a dud, Boeing would be gone.
If you bet wrong or the firms who do not get accepted in the marketplace, they (or our portfolio's), end up in the dust heap of history.