keeping with the insight that a persuasive advertising campaign can be just as effective as technological sophistication at bringing a successful product to market, Christensen's theory explains why many disruptive innovations are not advanced or useful technologies, rather combinations of existing off-the-shelf components, applied shrewdly to a fledgling value network. Online news site TechRepublic proposes an end using the term, and similar related terms, suggesting that, as of 2014, it is overused jargon. Definition Disruption is a process, not a product or service, that occurs from the nascent to the mainstream Originates in low-end (less demanding customers) or new market (where none existed) footholds New firms don't catch on with mainstream customers until quality catches up with their standards Success is not a requirement and some business can be disruptive but fail New firm's business model differs significantly from incumbent Christensen continues to develop and refine the theory and has accepted that not all examples of disruptive innovation perfectly fit into his theory. For example, he conceded that originating in the low end of the market is not always a cause of disruptive innovation, but rather it fosters competitive business models, using Uber as an example. In an interview with Forbes magazine he stated:"Uber helped me realize that it isn’t that being at the bottom of the market is the causal mechanism, but that it’s correlated with a business model that is unattractive to its competitor". Theory The current theoretical understanding of disruptive innovation is different from what might be expected by default, an idea that Clayton M. Christensen called the "technology mudslide hypothesis". This is the simplistic idea that an established firm fails because it doesn't "keep up technologically" with other firms. In this hypothesis, firms are like climbers scrambling upward on crumbling footing, where it takes constant upward-climbing effort just to stay still, and any break from the effort (such as complacency born of profitability) causes a rapid downhill slide. Christensen and colleagues have shown that this simplistic hypothesis is wrong; it doesn't model reality. What they have shown is that good firms are usually aware of the innovations, but their business environment does not allow them to pursue them when they first arise, because they are not profitable enough at first and because their development can take scarce resources away from that of sustaining innovations (which are needed to compete against current competition). In Christensen's terms, a