In 2001 Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School told an alumni conference that companies give customers more than they can use: “overshooting is always inconceivable, and overshooting always happens.” His example: “Microsoft has way overshot what the customer needs.”
In Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation, overshooting opens the way for rivals that are cheaper and simpler. Such an innovation becomes disruptive only in a market where customers are being given more than they need.