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Disruption is an ideal, not necessarily a fact about the status quo. It's an ideal as old as David and Goliath, embodying the hope (against all odds) that the u

by kijin 11y ago

Disruption is an ideal, not necessarily a fact about the status quo. It's an ideal as old as David and Goliath, embodying the hope (against all odds) that the underdog might one day overcome a much stronger competitor. Most of the time, the underdog just gets squashed and we never hear about it. Ideals are neither predictions nor diagnoses. They're something we need to fight tooth and nail to achieve, not something we can take for granted. So economists probably shouldn't tout disruption as such a major factor in the success and failure of well-known companies, and entrepreneurs should likewise stop assuming that it will happen as advertised.

brrt 11y ago
I think that is an unrealistically optimistic and friendly interpretation of Christensens' position. I agree that the idealistic aspect of disruption probably explains it's popularity (not to mention the opportunistic aspect). But Christensen cum suis have been propagating disruption as a fact for nearly twenty years, and it has had an enormous influence on the public debate. And as usual with influential ideas, it's not actually true, and (I think) a very reasonable amount scepticism would have demonstrated that much earlier. As an academic, I really think the global community could have expected more honesty from Christensen.
- notahacker 11y ago
  In fairness, I think the popularity of Christensen's terminology far exceeds the acceptance of his theory. "Disrupt" has become a startup cliche widely applied by people that haven't read his books to startups that don't fit the pattern he purported to identify. So social networks get described as "disruptive" even though the closest thing to a financial edge they have over competing distractions is not being under any pressure whatsoever to make a profit. Tesla gets lazily labelled as "disruptive" even though it's offering a high-priced, technically-superior product to the incumbents and the CEO is actually on record saying he's not a fan of Christensen's theory and he instead aims to grow businesses by expanding technological possibilities.
shalmanese 11y ago
Christensen's thesis is very specific though. It's that: * Companies continue to add features and complexity onto a product to grow their market. * A competitor comes along with a product that is worse and cheaper. * Structural forces prevent the incumbents from following because the lost revenue from existing lines of business exceed the potential of new business. * Competitors continue to grow their market and eat into the dominance of incumbents. * The competitors then become the incumbents and the cycle continues anew. That's a very specific chain of events that makes testable predictions and is far from the broad, overly encompassing definition of disruption. A great example of the disruption process following the Christensen model would be AirBNB. When AirBNB debuted, it was objectively crappier on almost all metrics compared to hotels. However, as AirBNB has grown, it's steadily started addressing it's deficiencies against hotels. At the same time, structural factors meant that Hilton could have never gotten into the same business as AirBNB because they had a brand to protect. As a result, AirBNB is now valued at a non-trivial percentage of the entire hotel business.

by kijin 11y ago

brrt 11y ago

I think that is an unrealistically optimistic and friendly interpretation of Christensens' position. I agree that the idealistic aspect of disruption probably explains it's popularity (not to mention the opportunistic aspect). But Christensen cum suis have been propagating disruption as a fact for nearly twenty years, and it has had an enormous influence on the public debate. And as usual with influential ideas, it's not actually true, and (I think) a very reasonable amount scepticism would have demonstrated that much earlier. As an academic, I really think the global community could have expected more honesty from Christensen.

notahacker 11y ago
In fairness, I think the popularity of Christensen's terminology far exceeds the acceptance of his theory. "Disrupt" has become a startup cliche widely applied by people that haven't read his books to startups that don't fit the pattern he purported to identify. So social networks get described as "disruptive" even though the closest thing to a financial edge they have over competing distractions is not being under any pressure whatsoever to make a profit. Tesla gets lazily labelled as "disruptive" even though it's offering a high-priced, technically-superior product to the incumbents and the CEO is actually on record saying he's not a fan of Christensen's theory and he instead aims to grow businesses by expanding technological possibilities.

shalmanese 11y ago

Christensen's thesis is very specific though. It's that: * Companies continue to add features and complexity onto a product to grow their market. * A competitor comes along with a product that is worse and cheaper. * Structural forces prevent the incumbents from following because the lost revenue from existing lines of business exceed the potential of new business. * Competitors continue to grow their market and eat into the dominance of incumbents. * The competitors then become the incumbents and the cycle continues anew. That's a very specific chain of events that makes testable predictions and is far from the broad, overly encompassing definition of disruption. A great example of the disruption process following the Christensen model would be AirBNB. When AirBNB debuted, it was objectively crappier on almost all metrics compared to hotels. However, as AirBNB has grown, it's steadily started addressing it's deficiencies against hotels. At the same time, structural factors meant that Hilton could have never gotten into the same business as AirBNB because they had a brand to protect. As a result, AirBNB is now valued at a non-trivial percentage of the entire hotel business.