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A designer’s dilemma

How do we deal with disruptive technologies like Deepseek?

Darren Yeo
UX Collective
7 min readFeb 9, 2025

Deepseek, an agile and resourceful AI underdog, is challenging industry giants like ChatGPT by leveraging innovation and rapid iteration, echoing the disruptive patterns outlined in Clayton Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma.
Deepseek, an agile and resourceful AI underdog, is challenging industry giants like ChatGPT by leveraging innovation and rapid iteration, echoing the disruptive patterns outlined in Clayton Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma. (image source: venngenn ai)

Deepseek’s disruptive impact as the underdog

If you look hard enough, you’ll notice similar patterns throughout the tech world.

The latest example is a modern David and Goliath story in AI: OpenAI versus DeepSeek. On one side, OpenAI benefits from abundant resources; on the other, DeepSeek battles challenges ranging from export controls to a lean development team.

So, it’s astonishing to learn that Deepseek is acing the AI race — delivering results at twice the speed and 90% accuracy on just 2% of the budget of its behemoth competitors. And the best part? It’s free and open source.

There’s plenty of time to fully appreciate what Deepseek has achieved, but it only took one model to break the camel’s back before a floodgate of competitors poured in. Shortly after, news of Alibaba’s Qwen 2.5 Max emerged, with Tencent, ByteDance, and many other startups set to follow.

It almost seems as if David has multiplied into a legion of Lilliputians, collectively pinning a once-mighty Goliath to the ground.

Lessons from the Innovator’s Dilemma

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Published in UX Collective

We believe designers are thinkers as much as they are makers. Curated stories on UX, Visual & Product Design. https://linktr.ee/uxc

Written by Darren Yeo

Design Innovator | UX/AI | Humanity-Centered Designer | SystemOps | Rethinking Design, Redesigning Thinking | Living, Breathing Experience

Responses (4)

What are your thoughts?

Innovation, like in project management, is rarely about maintaining the status quo—it’s about adapting and executing effectively. DeepSeek’s rise follows the classic Innovator’s Dilemma, proving that disruption often comes from lean, agile teams…

1

Good

1

DeepSeek is shaking up AI, but it’s also forcing designers to rethink their role. If speed, iteration, and efficiency outweigh traditional UX principles, where does that leave design? Do we adapt to this new reality or redefine what meaningful design looks like in an AI-driven world?