Can a theory that explains why successful organizations fail and newcomers prevail help turn around America’s public schools? Michael B. Horn describes how the idea of disruptive innovation, developed by management researcher and author Clayton M. Christensen, can provide a fresh perspective on struggling education systems, and perhaps offer some solutions. Business history, Horn tells his audience, is littered with cases of unlikely triumphs, when a smaller firm vanquishes a large, well-established company by introducing a novel product or service. Christensen studied successive generations of business takedowns to produce his theory of disruptive innovation, explaining for instance, how Toyota toppled Ford, and why scrappy, garage-based personal computer makers ultimately felled minicomputer giants DEC and Wang. Christensen highlighted a common feature in these cases: the upstart did not roll out a breakthrough concept sweeping established consumers off their feet, but rather came out with a product or service that appealed to non-consumers — offering something uniquely affordable, accessible, convenient or useful. Christensen suggested that if a business could identify and develop products for non-consumers, it could open up vast new markets, and sometimes transform an entire industry.  “This story of disruptive innovation repeats in a lot of fields,” says Horn. With education, the question becomes how to apply disruption as a positive force, propagating new ideas that are relatively simple to adopt and that offer an inviting, student-centric alternative to the often tradition-bound processes of many school systems. Horn cites online learning as a disruptive innovation that has particular potential in education, especially when you consider the number of “non-consumption opportunities” that exist. Dropouts, home-schooled students, school commuters, incarcerated youth, tutoring, professional development, adult lifelong learning, are all areas wit...