Disruptive innovations fail because they do not provide immediate financial value

Incumbent organizations are often the original inventors of disruptive innovations, but the organizational culture and financial structure constrain them from pursuing it.

… established firms confronted with disruptive technology change did not have trouble developing the requisite technology: Prototypes of the new drives had often been developed before management was asked to make a decision. Rather, disruptive projects stalled when it came to allocating scarce resources among competing product and technology development proposals^[1]

When management of an organization weighs in the balance sustaining their existing projects to meet the well-known needs of their existing customers in a known market (sustaining innovations) against investing in unknown technologies with small markets and poorly defined customer needs (disruptive innovations), sustaining what they are already doing is vastly more likely to win out.

Sustaining projects addressing the needs of the firms’ most powerful customers
almost always preempted resources from disruptive technologies with small markets and poorly defined customer needs.^[2]

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