Jim Marshall, the man who created the Marshall amp, died yesterday at 88.  Everyone who likes music knows that the Marshall Stack influenced generations of rock and punk musicians from the Who to the Ramones and beyond. What nobody realizes is that Marshall did this by being disruptive. 

According to The Guardian,

"Marshall was a drummer and drum teacher who used his earnings to set up a music shop in west London in 1960. Among his customers were the likes of Ritchie Blackmore and Pete Townshend, and it was through talking to them that Marshall realised there was a gap in the market for a guitar amplifier cheaper than the American-made models popular at the time. When, at Townshend's request, a Marshall 1959 amplifier head was teamed with a cabinet, the "Marshall stack" was born, becoming the defining feature in rock bands' backlines for generations to come."

That sounds an awful lot like a garage hacker inventing the next new social app phenomenon to me - 50 years before garage hackers and social apps.

And the way he found success was by offering a cheaper alternative in a market that was full of expensive options. 

We don't tend to think of older ideas like this as being "disruptive" because nobody thought in those terms in those days.  But the truth of the matter is that being a guy (or girl) in a garage building something that is cheaper than the competition has always been the way to change the world - and it always will be.