“It’s not the technology of Exascale that is disruptive, but the things Exascale makes possible that will be disruptive,” says Thomas Thurston, CEO of Growth Science International, “Exascale isn’t a “disruptor,” it is a foundation upon which a million disruptions can be based.  It enables others to be disruptive in ways and at a scale never before imagined.”

With the eventual arrival of exascale systems, we face a level of disruption that is unlike anything this community has ever experienced. But what are we really talking about when we throw these business pop culture terms around like Frisbees™?

The term disruptive technologies was coined by Clayton Christensen, and introduced in his 1995 article Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave. Subsequently he changed the phrasing from “disruptive technologies” to “disruptive innovation” in his 2003 book, The Innovator’s Solution, because he came to the understanding that it’s the strategy or business model that the technology enables that creates the disruptive impact — not the technology itself.