6 ms·

Disruption is not a strategy

94 points by digisth 10y ago

joeyspn 10y ago
Relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7982410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7982410
petewailes 10y ago
There's something important in the latter half of this: understanding that this isn't useful as a guide, but as a warning. No-one realistically sets out to create "a Google". People set out to solve a problem. Sometimes that problem turns out to fuel vast business, sometimes not. You can guess at the size, but sometimes you're going to be wrong (hello Twitter). You can aim to replace a business, but it's near impossible to do it because you know what the future of that thing will be (hello Windows Mobile). Even ARM didn't know smartphones were going to be a thing, at the scale they are. ARM ate Intel's lunch, not by going after smartphones, but by making processors designed to work with virtually no power. Smartphones just happened to come along and need that. You can't intend to be disruptive. You can aim to become a big business, but that's out-competing, not disrupting, and they're not the same (hello Snapchat). The market tells you you were disruptive after the fact.
- rhaps0dy 10y ago
  Good comment. However for future readers, I wish to point out that "ARM are Intel's lunch" is probably instead "ARM ate Intel's lunch". That might save some confusion :)
  - petewailes 10y ago
    Edited. Good spot!
    - mrec 10y ago
      Also, is there a "don't" missing in "you know what the future of that thing will be"?
- petra 10y ago
  But still, you can try to steer towards being disruptive when your choose your idea: you select unserved/underserved markets, or markets you can serve at lower profits than the incumbent, and do so using technologies you think can improve enough in performance/quality to compete with the incumbent while still having lower costs(which is a good way to choose a tech anyway). And sure it doesn't guarrantee anything, but it increases your chances of disruption. And with that, you still need to build a strategy and find barriers to entry. because (a)companies are more prepared towards disruptive innovation today , and (b)if you don't have good barriers to entry, once you become a threat, the incumbent will copy you.
- wslh 10y ago
  I think this is changing and a company like Google can see what we call "the future", based on virtually infinite data points. I am not saying that these data points are all possible futures but they give a clear advantage over entrepreneurs with minimal data. True, you can't predict the real future but Intel could act earlier with more information. Andy Grove wrote about this on his "paranoid book".
  - stcredzero 10y ago
    Google can see what we call "the future", based on virtually infinite data points. If Google can manage them usefully, those points are clearly not virtually infinite. (Otherwise, you're diluting the meaning of the word.)
- logicallee 10y ago
  >No-one realistically sets out to create "a Google" but lots of people unrealistically set out to create "a Google" and some of them succeed. Who never would have if they had had a realistic goal. my goals are completely unrealistic. most people with such goals fail completely.
  - petewailes 10y ago
    Even if you succeed, that's anecdotal. Telling others to do the same wouldn't be good advice, in the same way as a lottery winner telling others to play wouldn't.
    - logicallee 10y ago
      If one in ten thousand people who set out to create a billion dollars of value for society and themselves succeed, and the others fail but use the skills they learned to lead gainfully employed, happy lives, why is that not good advice? Society nets a billion dollars, and the expected return is let's say 1b/10k = $100k, though the distribution of outcomes is skewed. So why not? What's the objection?
zby 10y ago
A great article. One addition - the answer to the question why 'disruption' became so popular should include that it is so ego stroking.
prof_hobart 10y ago
Although I agree that having a business plan that's based on nothing more than a concept of "being disruptive" is not much of a plan at all, I feel that in some parts, he's picking a strawman and arguing against that. He claims that "I’m sure what the presenter of the slide was getting at was Clayton Christensen’s definition of disruption from his classic book The Innovator’s Dilemma. ". He then goes on to say (talking about Square and Uber) that "neither of these companies were disruptive in The Innovator’s Dilemma sense". However, I'd be surprised if the presenter wasn't thinking precisely of people like Uber and the type of "disruption" they've brought to the taxi industry. So, if they are thinking of Uber, and if Uber's disruption isn't the sort being talked about in the Innovators dilemma, then I suspect they weren't thinking of Christensen’s definition at all. I'm not sure why disruption has to be less functional - it just needs to be tackling the root problem (and often redefining what that root problem is) in a different way to the incumbent.
- ganeumann 10y ago
  OP. Meh, every single startup I've seen in the past 25 years has claimed that they are tackling their problem differently than their competitors in some way. If this is what disruption means, then it's the quintessential distinction without a difference. It's the entrepreneurs' equivalent of a VC saying "we add value." A waste of pixels. And if that's the entire content of your strategy--you think being different is all the strategy you need because, "disruptive"--then chances are you're cooked.
  - prof_hobart 10y ago
    Like I say, I'm not disagreeing with the idea that "we will disrupt" on its own is no more use as a business case than "we will make wads of cash". What I am questioning is the idea that there's only one way to disrupt an industry - to be cheaper and in some way subpar compared to the incumbent. You seem to be suggesting that the taxi industry hasn't been disrupted by Uber, because it doesn't align with one person's definition of what disruption looks like. And I don't really understand that. There's clearly been huge disruption there.
  - galistoca 10y ago
zamalek 10y ago
Interesting perspective, color my beliefs altered. So far as tech goes I think that disruption could still be an outcome that you aim for (certainly not in medicine). Even then you may not plan for the eventuality, merely by serendipity absolutely know that you are sitting on a disruptive idea. It's a great thing to have and maybe something that you can't plan for.
ThomPete 10y ago
Disruption is not something you set out to do, but it can be a result of what you are doing. Clayton Christensens "innovators dilemma" isn't a book about how to disrupt, but how disruption happens. The problem with a large part of the newspeak in the startup community is that it has become too formulaic. 10 things, how you, why you, how to. I avoid these articles like the plague as they have nothing to do with running a startup.
- swalsh 10y ago
  "I avoid these articles like the plague as they have nothing to do with running a startup." They're just for SEO anyways. I've been trying to learn more about marketing lately, and one of the biggest issues I've run into is that almost all the articles about marketing are marketing materials themselves.
  - ThomPete 10y ago
    Yes. Content marketing as they call it. My point is just that market insights doesn't come on formula. You can't read a book and learn about marketing. You can go out and do it or surround you with people who have experience doing it. Sure you can learn a little here and there. But hardly anything that will make your company make it compared to those who didn't.
askyourmother 10y ago
But after we disrupted our pivot and enabled a sharing economy, we forgot what we were actually doing and when back to real jobs.
serg_chernata 10y ago
Reminds me of "going viral" and how everyone kept saying: "let's create a viral video".
stcredzero 10y ago
Christensen’s theory is descriptive, not prescriptive. It names a process but does not tell you how to generate that process Something similar has been said of Marxism, in that it's an interesting way to think about what has come before, but has no grounding when it tries to talk about what should happen in the future.

94 points by digisth 10y ago

Relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7982410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7982410

There's something important in the latter half of this: understanding that this isn't useful as a guide, but as a warning. No-one realistically sets out to create "a Google". People set out to solve a problem. Sometimes that problem turns out to fuel vast business, sometimes not. You can guess at the size, but sometimes you're going to be wrong (hello Twitter). You can aim to replace a business, but it's near impossible to do it because you know what the future of that thing will be (hello Windows Mobile). Even ARM didn't know smartphones were going to be a thing, at the scale they are. ARM ate Intel's lunch, not by going after smartphones, but by making processors designed to work with virtually no power. Smartphones just happened to come along and need that. You can't intend to be disruptive. You can aim to become a big business, but that's out-competing, not disrupting, and they're not the same (hello Snapchat). The market tells you you were disruptive after the fact.

rhaps0dy 10y ago
Good comment. However for future readers, I wish to point out that "ARM are Intel's lunch" is probably instead "ARM ate Intel's lunch". That might save some confusion :)
- petewailes 10y ago
  Edited. Good spot!
  - mrec 10y ago
    Also, is there a "don't" missing in "you know what the future of that thing will be"?
petra 10y ago
But still, you can try to steer towards being disruptive when your choose your idea: you select unserved/underserved markets, or markets you can serve at lower profits than the incumbent, and do so using technologies you think can improve enough in performance/quality to compete with the incumbent while still having lower costs(which is a good way to choose a tech anyway). And sure it doesn't guarrantee anything, but it increases your chances of disruption. And with that, you still need to build a strategy and find barriers to entry. because (a)companies are more prepared towards disruptive innovation today , and (b)if you don't have good barriers to entry, once you become a threat, the incumbent will copy you.
wslh 10y ago
I think this is changing and a company like Google can see what we call "the future", based on virtually infinite data points. I am not saying that these data points are all possible futures but they give a clear advantage over entrepreneurs with minimal data. True, you can't predict the real future but Intel could act earlier with more information. Andy Grove wrote about this on his "paranoid book".
- stcredzero 10y ago
  Google can see what we call "the future", based on virtually infinite data points. If Google can manage them usefully, those points are clearly not virtually infinite. (Otherwise, you're diluting the meaning of the word.)
logicallee 10y ago
>No-one realistically sets out to create "a Google" but lots of people unrealistically set out to create "a Google" and some of them succeed. Who never would have if they had had a realistic goal. my goals are completely unrealistic. most people with such goals fail completely.
- petewailes 10y ago
  Even if you succeed, that's anecdotal. Telling others to do the same wouldn't be good advice, in the same way as a lottery winner telling others to play wouldn't.
  - logicallee 10y ago
    If one in ten thousand people who set out to create a billion dollars of value for society and themselves succeed, and the others fail but use the skills they learned to lead gainfully employed, happy lives, why is that not good advice? Society nets a billion dollars, and the expected return is let's say 1b/10k = $100k, though the distribution of outcomes is skewed. So why not? What's the objection?

zby 10y ago

A great article. One addition - the answer to the question why 'disruption' became so popular should include that it is so ego stroking.

prof_hobart 10y ago

Although I agree that having a business plan that's based on nothing more than a concept of "being disruptive" is not much of a plan at all, I feel that in some parts, he's picking a strawman and arguing against that. He claims that "I’m sure what the presenter of the slide was getting at was Clayton Christensen’s definition of disruption from his classic book The Innovator’s Dilemma. ". He then goes on to say (talking about Square and Uber) that "neither of these companies were disruptive in The Innovator’s Dilemma sense". However, I'd be surprised if the presenter wasn't thinking precisely of people like Uber and the type of "disruption" they've brought to the taxi industry. So, if they are thinking of Uber, and if Uber's disruption isn't the sort being talked about in the Innovators dilemma, then I suspect they weren't thinking of Christensen’s definition at all. I'm not sure why disruption has to be less functional - it just needs to be tackling the root problem (and often redefining what that root problem is) in a different way to the incumbent.

ganeumann 10y ago
OP. Meh, every single startup I've seen in the past 25 years has claimed that they are tackling their problem differently than their competitors in some way. If this is what disruption means, then it's the quintessential distinction without a difference. It's the entrepreneurs' equivalent of a VC saying "we add value." A waste of pixels. And if that's the entire content of your strategy--you think being different is all the strategy you need because, "disruptive"--then chances are you're cooked.
- prof_hobart 10y ago
  Like I say, I'm not disagreeing with the idea that "we will disrupt" on its own is no more use as a business case than "we will make wads of cash". What I am questioning is the idea that there's only one way to disrupt an industry - to be cheaper and in some way subpar compared to the incumbent. You seem to be suggesting that the taxi industry hasn't been disrupted by Uber, because it doesn't align with one person's definition of what disruption looks like. And I don't really understand that. There's clearly been huge disruption there.
- galistoca 10y ago

zamalek 10y ago

Interesting perspective, color my beliefs altered. So far as tech goes I think that disruption could still be an outcome that you aim for (certainly not in medicine). Even then you may not plan for the eventuality, merely by serendipity absolutely know that you are sitting on a disruptive idea. It's a great thing to have and maybe something that you can't plan for.

ThomPete 10y ago

Disruption is not something you set out to do, but it can be a result of what you are doing. Clayton Christensens "innovators dilemma" isn't a book about how to disrupt, but how disruption happens. The problem with a large part of the newspeak in the startup community is that it has become too formulaic. 10 things, how you, why you, how to. I avoid these articles like the plague as they have nothing to do with running a startup.

swalsh 10y ago
"I avoid these articles like the plague as they have nothing to do with running a startup." They're just for SEO anyways. I've been trying to learn more about marketing lately, and one of the biggest issues I've run into is that almost all the articles about marketing are marketing materials themselves.
- ThomPete 10y ago
  Yes. Content marketing as they call it. My point is just that market insights doesn't come on formula. You can't read a book and learn about marketing. You can go out and do it or surround you with people who have experience doing it. Sure you can learn a little here and there. But hardly anything that will make your company make it compared to those who didn't.

askyourmother 10y ago

But after we disrupted our pivot and enabled a sharing economy, we forgot what we were actually doing and when back to real jobs.

serg_chernata 10y ago

Reminds me of "going viral" and how everyone kept saying: "let's create a viral video".

stcredzero 10y ago

Christensen’s theory is descriptive, not prescriptive. It names a process but does not tell you how to generate that process Something similar has been said of Marxism, in that it's an interesting way to think about what has come before, but has no grounding when it tries to talk about what should happen in the future.