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“Disruption” has become such a buzzword, pervading everything on down to mayonnaise marketing, that people have begun to assume that it’s the goal of challenger brands. But challenger brands can’t let themselves become swept up in the mania for disruption.

Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, who coined the term “disruptive innovation,” is as responsible as anyone for creating the hype, albeit inadvertently. Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos loved Christensen’s book, “The Innovators Dilemma,” and such high praise from high places is catnip for Silicon Valley wags. As a result, “disruption” has become the ubiquitous verbal tic we hear today.

But Christensen had something very specific in mind: business-model disruption that comes from a competitor serving an overlooked segment with a low-cost offer, and then migrating up the value chain over time by leveraging a superior cost structure. A classic example is how Toyota disrupted and won in the U.S. car market in the 1960s.

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