If we're talking about how startups and journalists use it, then yes (and since English is what English speaking people speak, then that usage is a definition o

If we're talking about how startups and journalists use it, then yes (and since English is what English speaking people speak, then that usage is a definition of the word). But "disrupt" has a technical meaning, and pretty clearly defined by Christensen - a product/service that's worse for the main use of that category, but has other qualities valued by other customers for some other use; over time it improves, and while the category leader also improves it eventually "overshoots" what people need, whereas this new thing becomes acceptable AND it has those other qualities - at that point, it is dramatically replaced by the newcomer, completing the process of "disruption". Seminal example: 8 inch disk drives had (and have) greater capacity; but are bigger and less convenient, and a smaller diskdrive has enough capacity. Same thing happened to 5.25", 3.5", those tiny laptop ones, and now SSD. Same pattern. It's an industry/category event, not a company event... but some companies benefit from it. But it's not very predictive (even thoigh the pattern seems legit in hindsight); Christensen himself famously dismissed the iPhone with about as much aplomb as Cmdrtaco dismissed the iPod. TTBF, while smartphones are disrupting PCs, it's not that absolute; about as much as netbooks did. PCs are still going strong for games, development and business. It was a different story when PCs disrupted workstations.