Well, once upon a time, "disruption" had a real meaning. "Disruptive innovation" as a contrast with "sustaining innovation" that makes an existing thing better.

Well, once upon a time, "disruption" had a real meaning. "Disruptive innovation" as a contrast with "sustaining innovation" that makes an existing thing better. Corollary (quoted from elsewhere): "If the established players in the industry are trying to smack your new model down, that's a sign that your innovation isn't disruptive -- it means its utility is oriented similarly to theirs, so they could in principle adopt whatever use it has. The canonical example is steel micro-mills ... They started off being only good enough for low-margin, cruddy steel like rebar, business which the real steel mills was delighted not to have to deal with any more. Only the micro-mills got better and better and kept taking the lowest-margin business away from the mills until most of them couldn't function any more." (Related corollary, disruption = innovation through inferiority: http://www.mrteacup.org/post/startups-innovation-through-inferiority.html http://www.mrteacup.org/post/startups-innovation-through-inf...) Of course somewhere along the line someone decided that disruption = the new hotness, so now no matter what you do, even if it's something that's been done forever (e.g. renting clothes out short-term), you have to call it "disruptive".