How Lytro Offers a New View of Optical Photography The startup's technology is reinventing the digital camera and carving its own competitive niche.

Look up the word disrupter and you'll likely run across phrases such as "destroy" and "cause turmoil." It's a serious word, with dire implications for the status quo.

You'd think it would take billions to rewrite the business model for entire industries, but that's not always the case. As the companies profiled on the following pages demonstrate, sometimes disruption is simply about wanting to make something better. And armed with a savvy acumen for spotting opportunity, these companies followed through on that goal, sparking revolutions within their respective fields of dining, HD video, media, photography and travel.

The consumer will ultimately decide whether these ideas become routine and transform the way everyone lives. But we do know that these companies will mete out a level of creative destruction on the entrenched businesses in each of their industry sectors.