The bottom line is that from a Christensen perspective, information technology and the Internet have been far more sustaining than disruptive for the great majority of industries. Most of the real competitive disruptions have been within the IT sector itself, and in particular between the different generations of hardware and software vendors. In contrast, it has always been striking that the same set of IT services vendors – IBM, EDS (now HP), Accenture (formerly Andersen), and CSC have been the dominant players for literally decades. This suggests that, for example, cloud computing can be a major IT industry force without necessarily disrupting the IT services business.

In other sectors such as travel, financial services, retail, health care and education, the Internet has nearly always been far more sustaining than disruptive, and thus IT is something to be embraced much more than feared. This will likely prove true for the iPad as well. For a first generation effort, it is an extremely impressive product that will surely improve over time. Apple’s biggest risk and challenge has always been the fl ip side of its greatest strength – its unwavering belief in doing things in its own integrated, often proprietary way, with little regard to established market norms or standards (see, for example, its decision not to support Flash on the iPad).

Over the course of 2010, we will be covering the battle between Apple, Google, Microsoft and RIM from an enterprise perspective, and substantial changes in mobile supplier leadership seem likely. But this is mostly something for the vendor side of the industry to worry about, especially European and Japanese firms who see themselves being bypassed in markets they used to lead. The rest of us would be wise to spend less time pondering the potentially disruptive effects of the iPad or any other new technology. The real story will be the many new sources of value and the ever-expanding opportunities IT creates to sustain our businesses and industries going forward.

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