Disruptive Innovation is a class of innovation project that develops entirely new products or services and creates new markets — the highest risk and highest potential reward of the three project classes in a portfolio, alongside Core and Adjacent Innovation. Because disruptive projects fall furthest from the existing business, they are the most prone to an RPP mismatch — needing resources, processes, and priorities the core organization has not optimized for — and the most likely to be starved or stopped for the wrong reasons when they are governed as if they were core projects.
In BRI Associates' methodology, the Disruptive class carries its own class profile — higher investment over a longer horizon, lower early survival rates, and different evaluation criteria and evidence standards than Core or Adjacent work — and often needs the separate, ambidextrous governance described under Company Fit and RPP. For the full treatment, see the Portfolio Management pillar at /supporting/portfolio-management. Related Terminology Index entries: Core Innovation; Adjacent Innovation; Portfolio Strategy; RPP; Ambidextrous Organization.
