[Purpose/significance] This paper systematically combs the disruptive technology discovery methods, to analyze the existing problems and put forward the future research directions. [Method/process] Through analyzing the related concepts of disruptive technology, the paper summarizes the content, advantages and disadvantages of various discovery methods, and further sorts out the main evaluation indexes of each method. [Result/conclusion] The existing methods are mainly based on the subjective analysis of technology management and application. Besides, objective detection based on patents or academic literature begins to appear in a small amount. These methods are all in the development stage with many deficiencies. Future research can be carried out in the following direction：using the theory and method of information science, based on the combined sources of patents and papers ,to set up a reasonable and applicable index system of disruptive technology identification from the objective angle.
