The Next Big Thing Starts Out Looking Like a Toy

Why the Next Big Thing Starts Out Looking Like a Toy

The next big thing will start out looking like a toy—something frivolous, impractical, or downright silly. That’s the bold claim Chris Dixon made in his January 3, 2010, blog post, "The next big thing will start out looking like a toy", and it’s rooted in a powerful insight from Clay Christensen’s disruptive technology theory, detailed in books like The Innovator’s Dilemma. This theory explains how groundbreaking innovations sneak past established giants not because they’re immediately superior, but because they’re dismissed as insignificant—until they’re not. Let’s unpack why this happens and spotlight some rebels, misfits, and outliers that prove the point.

The Nature of Disruptive Technologies

Disruptive technologies—those troublemakers that upend industries—start by serving niche markets or offering simpler, cheaper alternatives to the status quo. They don’t impress the mainstream at first, so they’re brushed off as toys. Christensen observed that technologies improve faster than user needs grow, a dynamic Dixon highlighted in his 2010 post. This rapid evolution turns these misfits into innovators that eventually dominate.

Take the telephone, a classic disruptive troublemaker. It could barely carry voices a mile or two when invented. Western Union, the telegraph titan, scoffed at it—useless for their business and railroad clients. But telephony rode infrastructure upgrades and network effects to bury the telegraph. Or consider personal computers (PCs), the misfit toys of the 1970s. Mainframe companies laughed them off—until microchips got cheap and PCs became the computing standard. Then there’s Skype, an outlier in the early 2000s. Telecom giants ignored this VoIP upstart, only to watch it leverage bandwidth growth into a global powerhouse.

Why Incumbents Miss the Boat

Big players miss these innovators because they’re fixated on today’s customers and markets. Disruptive technologies undershoot those needs initially, looking impractical or trivial. Incumbents don’t see the exponential improvements coming—fueled by external forces like cheaper hardware, better connectivity, or smarter devices—allowing these outliers to sneak past and rewrite the rules.

Not All Toys Become Giants

Not every toy is a troublemaker destined for greatness. Dixon emphasized in his post that you must view products as processes, not snapshots. Disruptive innovators ride waves of change—think plummeting microchip costs, ubiquitous bandwidth, or mobile devices turning into supercomputers. Wikipedia, for example, was a misfit in 2001: a chaotic, editable free-for-all next to polished encyclopedias. But its design sculpted user chaos into steady improvement, outpacing static rivals as Dixon noted, citing Clay Shirky’s take on its process-driven brilliance.

New Examples: Disruptive Rebels in Action

Beyond Dixon’s examples, consider these disruptive innovators that started as toys:

• Bitcoin, the troublemaker of finance. Launched in 2009, it was a geeky experiment dismissed by banks as a plaything for libertarians. Yet, riding blockchain’s rise and distrust in centralized systems, it’s grown into a trillion-dollar asset class by 2025, challenging traditional money.

• 3D Printing, the misfit of manufacturing. Early models in the 2000s were clunky, slow, and limited—hobbyist toys. But as materials science and precision advanced, it’s now printing everything from houses to organs, rattling industrial giants.

• TikTok, the innovator of social media. In 2016, as Musical.ly, it was a quirky app for lip-syncing teens—hardly a threat to Facebook. Fueled by AI-driven algorithms and mobile video trends, it’s now a cultural juggernaut, redefining entertainment.

• Tesla’s Electric Vehicles (EVs), the outlier of automaking. Early EVs were golf-cart-like novelties in the 2000s, mocked by Detroit. Tesla bet on battery breakthroughs and software, turning toys into luxury disruptors that forced the industry to pivot.

• ChatGPT, the troublemaker of AI. Launched in 2022 by OpenAI, it was a chatbot toy—fun but flawed. Rapid advancements in natural language processing made it a workplace game-changer by 2025, threatening search engines and assistants alike.

Sustaining vs. Disruptive Technologies

Not every valuable product is a disruptive rebel. Sustaining technologies—steady improvements to existing systems—can build solid businesses, as Dixon pointed out. They’re often gobbled up or mimicked by incumbents. But they won’t topple industries or headline 2030’s "top lists." That’s the domain of disruptive outliers—the toys that grow fangs.

Looking Ahead

Why does the next big thing start as a toy? It undershoots today’s needs, slipping under the radar, as Dixon argued in 2010. But technology’s relentless march—faster than user demands—turns these misfits into giants. The internet economy’s shifting leaderboard from 2000 to 2010, which Dixon marveled at, proves it: incumbents didn’t fail from laziness but from ignoring toys. Today, in 2025, the pattern holds. The next big thing—AI, biotech, or beyond—is out there, looking silly, waiting to disrupt.