A day's not wasted when you learn something.

I've been subscribing to TIME magazine for ten years now. Its weekly entrance into our home provides a take on world news and culture which I don't get from other sources - and nearly every week I find myself reaching for the OED to look up a word I don't know. Anything that expands my vocabulary is a good thing.
This week, however, I am excited to have been introduced to a whole new piece of jargon - for jargon it can only be. The August 2, 2010 Europe edition has an article about South Korea's LG Electronics, and I was puzzled by the sentence "...more than tripled the share of R&D spending on "disruptive" research -...". ??? How can research be disruptive, was my immediate thought. Reading on, I gathered that this term refers to research into brand-new areas, "breakthrough solutions" and that this research may not show results for a very long time. Okay...got it...
The very next article is about OLEDs (or Organic Light-Emitting Diodes) - fascinating reading. These are flat, flexible, and can even be transparent. They emit a warm glow, similar to sunlight, but remain cool to the touch. The last sentence of the second paragraph reads "..."That's the disruptive nature of it."..." - again, this word leapt off the page at me. At this point, a trip to the dictionary becomes mandatory.
My trusty OED only has the standard entry ...
disruptive adj. Causing problems, noise, etc. so that sth cannot continue normally.
Yes...time for a trip to that other font of all knowledge - google. Google, then to wikipedia, where I discover that I am many years behind on this one!
The entry for disruptive technology first entered the wikisphere in 2002! I'm eight years behind...
No, WAIT!
"The term disruptive technologies was coined by Clayton M. Christensen and introduced in his 1995 article Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave[3], which he co-wrote with Joseph Bower." (wikipedia).
I'm fifteen years behind!

And this is what wiki tells me it is all about.
"Disruptive innovation is a term used in business and technology literature to describe innovations that improve a product or service in ways that the market does not expect, typically by lowering price or designing for a different set of consumers."

Thanks to TIME, for helping me catch up, and thanks to google and wiki ( for teaching me something new today.