
What the Theory of “Disruptive Innovation” Gets Wrong - uladzislau
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/06/23/140623fa_fact_lepore/?
======
entangld
She seemed to state that Clayton Christensen cherry picked his companies and
excluded examples that didn't support his theory. And that there are many
companies which have failed or succeeded outside of his theory of disruption.

To summarize, we pay too much attention to disruption nowadays. We overuse it
to destructive ends, and she seems to think it wasn't based on rock solid
evidence. The article ends with a reference to more organic, collaborative and
poetic connections.

Not a strong critique in my opinion.

~~~
hyp0
She didn't get around to critiquing his theory, just the over-use of it.

And her summary didn't include the theory's essence: that incumbents are
captured by their present customers - even when they are 100% on top of the
coming tech, they _can 't_ desert them, and can't see the new customers
(which, to be fair, don't strictly exist yet).

I think his key background evidence is pretty strong: that technology improves
faster than we can absorb it e.g. PCs are now faster than they need to be for
most tasks. Although we do demand more of our PCs, they have improved at an
even faster rate. This relates to the above theory in that we now that they
are fast enough, we are willing to pay for some _other_ quality - like
portability. For businesses that have worked at improving the technology along
the dimension that was in demand for a long time (e.g. speed), they have
organized everything around this - R&D, manufacturing, marketing, positioning,
sales, partnerships, even their release schedule. They are optimized for
getting better at that dimension and selling that dimension. So.... when that
dimension is no longer in demand, all their optimization works against them.
It's difficult to change emphasis, both for engineering and marketing.

Right now, Intel - the _inventor_ of the CPU (and of the integrated circuit,
can you believe it?) - is putting its truly incredible resources, knowledge,
talent, skill and market position into more power-efficient CPUs (instead of
higher-performing) for smartphones.

But your smartphone doesn't use them.

~~~
XorNot
Conversely your smartphone connects to a lot of mainframes which are stacked
to the brim with Intel processors and that's not changing.

Intel have _tons_ of breathing room in the market - and they only need to
succeed at beating ARM _once_ to break their hold. They have faster fabs, more
fabs and more engineering talent then anyone else in the business. They're not
going anywhere.

~~~
hga
I doubt they can apply more hardware design engineering talent that the whole
ARM ecosystem can; they certainly haven't as of the last time I checked (which
was a while ago).

I also doubt the "beat them once" thesis. In general, to get "everyone" to
switch you need a 10X superiority over the competition, and I seriously doubt
that's in the cards. The ARM ecosystem is also extraordinary rich, and I can't
see how Intel could replicate it. Finally, I seriously doubt the big players,
some of whom have their own chip designs, and at least in the case of Samsung
manufacture them, would be happy to move from the ARM ecosystem to an Intel
monoculture where they'd be at Intel's mercy forever after.

------
spikels
Ironic how most of the criticism of "disruption" now comes from Progressives
and the Left. It's very strange to see them defending the staus quo, such as
taxi cab medallions and anti-sharing laws like no sublease clauses in rental
agreements. It is almost as if they are now "conservatives" trying to defend a
world view from the last century.

~~~
hga
They've largely won, and are now the "reactionaries", if you prefer, trying to
defend their establishment.

------
jval
Poor critiques of disruption like this one are only going to come thicker and
faster now that many academics are starting to feel threatened by MOOCs and
online learning.

Critiques of disruption have been around for years, most notably from within
the HBS faculty itself. Porter was quoted recently in the NYT as saying: "If
Clay and I differ, it’s that Clay sees disruption everywhere, in every
business, whereas I see it as something that happens every once in a while...
And what looks like disruption is in fact an incumbent firm not embracing
innovation [at all]."[1]

The NYT article cited is in many ways a much better illustration of what I
think Lepore is trying to get at in this article, namely that disruption is
not a universal theory of technology in business. That's a view I'm very
sympathetic towards. Lepore ends up making the bigger claim that the theory
has no predictive power and is only a useless after the fact justification for
why businesses perform in certain ways. I think that's totally unjustified. If
business theories were as certain as calculus we'd all be rich, but none of
them are. That doesn't make them useless, and the theory of disruption
certainly isn't so vague as to be useless.

Because Lepore isn't across the field in any detail, the article ends up being
a mix of side swipes at Christensen and caricatures of people in the startup
community. When you have to go through the bibliography of someone's book to
find fault with the choice of a reference to a tangential point (as the author
has done here), you start to come across as ranting rather than making a point
of any value.

I think the second last page is revealing though, as the author (who is an
American History professor at Harvard) takes aim at the application of
disruption to universities. There's a big problem here, because most academics
are pedagogues who love education for the sake of education, and can't accept
or can't see that for most people, university is a job certification factory
rather than a place of intellectual inquiry. I read a lot of MOOC and
disruption-hate from academics, and much of it tends to stem from this
problem. We're talking each other and I'm afraid it's only going to get worse.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/01/business/business-
school-d...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/01/business/business-school-
disrupted.html?_r=0)

~~~
bhouston
> Poor critiques of disruption like this one are only going to come thicker
> and faster now that many academics are starting to feel threatened by MOOCs
> and online learning.

Most of the article is actually a pretty good critique of Disruptive
Innovation theory as being selectively applied in a post hoc manner that is
also lacking predictive abilities.

Even though I consider my current business endeavor a "disruptive innovation",
I still thought this was a really good article that breaks through the often
mindless praise of disruption (which I myself have been a part of.)

I think that these types of counter arguments are valid in a self-correcting
society.

(Although I found the article ended on a weak note, even though it started
strong.)

~~~
jval
I don't disagree with you that disruption is often misapplied and mindlessly
praised, I just think this article didn't do a good job of illustrating either
of those points.

I think the NYT article I cited did a much better job of addressing both
points.

------
thinkerer
Feels like the author is trying hard to debunk the book's claims by attacking
the definitions. I would think that by providing counter examples or counter
thesis would have been more effective.

For example, saying the excavator firm perished due to lack of innovation was
due to mismanagement and LBO rather than poor product and market was really
missing the point.

And the last paragraph "Disruptive innovation is a theory about why businesses
fail. It’s not more than that. It doesn’t explain change. It’s not a law of
nature. It’s an artifact of history, an idea, forged in time; it’s the
manufacture of a moment of upsetting and edgy uncertainty. Transfixed by
change, it’s blind to continuity. It makes a very poor prophet"

I think its more than just that. It talks about how people adapt to changes
and how the needs interact with supply of products, services and even
resources. Thats how fracking and shale came about isnt it and author is
saying it doesn't explain change? Saying disruptive innovation is a poor
prophet is just inaccurate. It may be because the timeframe is off,
observations are off or the space itself is off. I wouldn't shrug it off just
like that...

------
apu
Heh, a nice piece of post-hoc rationalization. Compare to this article in the
newyorker from 2 years ago (different author, but still...):
[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/05/14/120514fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/05/14/120514fa_fact_macfarquhar)

(h/t to Jay Rosen on twitter:
[https://twitter.com/jayrosen_nyu](https://twitter.com/jayrosen_nyu) )

------
exstudent
This may be the most overwrought piece of writing I've ever read. Can someone
summarize it? I couldn't make it past the first page. It didn't seem like it
was going anywhere insightful though.

~~~
leepowers
In brief, the article contends that the idea of disruptive innovation as
outlined by the book "The Innovator's Dilemma" lacks any substantive
historical analysis and rests solely on cherry-picking very specific
businesses and industries.

The main "meat" of the criticism begins at the bottom of the second page and
spills over to the third:
[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/06/23/140623fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/06/23/140623fa_fact_lepore/?currentPage=2)

~~~
dnautics
That's true, because favorable-normative analysis of "disruptive innovation"
suffers from survivorship bias. However, as a posit-ive description of a
phenomenon, "innovation" simply put, exists, and I'm not sure what "can be
done about it" \- after all, "biological natural selection" is basically
"disruption", as is "the scientific method".

So what? Might as well be disruptive, on the off chance you do society a
favor. If you're disruptive and profitable, odds are you're likely doing
society a favor (marginal though it might be).

~~~
jrochkind1
That makes very little sense, it's a theory that can apply to anything at all.

For any X at all: Sure, there's not actually a lot of evidence that X is
correlated with success and/or social benefit, but might as well do X anyway
on the off chance that you'll be doing society a favor!

What? That's kind of religious thinking, I guess.

(Also, what about the 'off chance' you'll be making society worse?)

But I'm not sure "be disruptive" actually means much at all anyway. I'm not
sure you do either. The scientific method is 'basically disruption', for what
definition of 'disruption' exactly? Apparently everything is 'basically
disruption'. Or only the things we like?

------
tsunamifury
A complete misunderstanding of the nature of disruption and a patently false
statement that disruption is about the past and an post hoc justification.

Disruption is about providing a better product in the market in the midst of
legacy producers who have become slow and indifferent due to their success. We
see it every day with thousands of startups and legacy companies alike;
google, apple, uber, tesla, and many more. It didn't start with The Innovators
Dilemma and the author doesn't define it, mere he observed some of its
properties.

This seems to be the type of nostalgic meandering that's used often in the
publishing industry to justify its value of legacy aesthetic over innovation.

~~~
cageface
There are plenty of counter examples cited in the article. And she also points
out some significant flaws in the examples Christensen used to support his
original theory. Maybe some people just aren't comfortable having their new
orthodoxies questioned?

~~~
tsunamifury
Companies =/= products

