

Clayton Christensen Responds to New Yorker Takedown of 'Disruptive Innovation' - mathattack
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-06-20/clayton-christensen-responds-to-new-yorker-takedown-of-disruptive-innovation#p1

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wsxcde
Christensen has either inadvertently fallen into the DH4 [1] trap or is
deliberately trying to cloud the central issue. What I would like him to do is
address the key point that Jill Lepore made, which is that his theory of
disruption doesn't have too much predictive power. The fact that he hasn't
addressed this seems only to strengthen Lepore's argument.

[http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html)

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mathattack
I think it's fair to say that you can't trade securities on his strategy. (He
failed at it too) This is actually true of most business strategy. It's soft,
and not actually scientific and predictive. Ironically, some strategists
couldn't even keep strategy firms open. (Look at Michael Porter) Does this
mean strategy should be ignored? No, but bold claims should be taken with a
grain of salt. Hindsight to create cases and write books is 20/20.

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clinton_sf
I didn't give this article much weight -- Bennett called up Christensen on the
telephone and got an emotional, ad-hoc response. This isn't a well thought
out, polished, official response from Christensen. Hopefully we'll see one
later on.

I had to step back and think of examples that would qualify for what
Christensen is talking about. I think I found a few, so I can't take Lepore's
piece at face value.

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dusklight
This rebuttal certainly makes me more inclined to believe the takedown piece.
Disruption obviously happens but Christensen has made me less likely to
believe he has any ability to predict when it is going to happen or why, or
that he has anything useful to say about it.

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epayne
This comment from page three is interesting: "[Disruption] has never happened
in the hotel industry, for example."

