
The problem, really, is this thing called “disruption” - pencilpup223
https://www.wired.com/story/disruption-is-how-silicon-valley-eats-its-young/
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exelius
Disruption is nothing new; it's been happening for millennia. I think the
_pace_ of modern disruption is much faster than in the past -- but IMO this
has more to do with global population levels. Technology was an enabler here,
but really what we've seen is that world population has grown so much that
formerly "niche" markets are now quite viable simply based on sheer numbers. A
higher number of viable niche markets means more adjacent markets to try to
disrupt bigger markets from, leading to a constant cycle of disruption.

In many senses, "disruptive" simply means "a greater share of revenue goes to
the shareholders". This allows "disruptive" companies to win in price-
competitive markets, but it has the side effect of consolidating economic wins
in single layer of the economy at a macro level. Advances in capital finance
without accompanying advances in worker protections led to this; but again,
thanks to the population mentioned above, there's not exactly a worker
shortage and thus no pressure for worker protections from the political class.

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dalbasal
Partly (even mostly), this is a rant about hyperbole and cliche.

I'm not sure if this is true, but I've heard title "President" was selected
specifically for its understated connotations (as opposed to pomous titles
like prime minister). It escalated.

A lot of the tech cliches start as understated ways of being hyperpolic.
Paradigm a fairly an abstract term. Disrupt is an understated term for
revolutionize. But when they reach ciche status, they get annoying.

There's an art to understated but ambituous, and an appeal to it. Musk pulls
it off at times.

I was about to accuse America for this and quote soft words and big sticks,
but....that's an americanism ain't it? I dunno. I do think american tolerance
for hyperactive positivity is in play somewhere.

All that said, disruption deos happens, but is hindsight it usually seems like
a technological or societal disruption, not a company led thing. I mean, news
has certainly been disrupted.

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hyperpallium
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.

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dalbasal
True.

It started with a fairly specific pathway to "revolutionize". Thus always with
cliches. They start as meaningful terms, with some interesting insights rolled
in. Then literally becomes literally: People who don't understand the joke
still use it.

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rajathagasthya
Also, "changing the world". Sorry, your messaging app isn't doing that.

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msla
Right. Messaging apps like Twitter didn't change the world.

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rajathagasthya
I didn't target Twitter or WhatsApp or any other app. Sure, some did. But most
of the startups that say they "change the world" use the phrase very casually.

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rb808
I think one thing is disruption the other is unprofitable disruption. Newer
better ways of doing things is great. The problem is when Uber & Amazon
disrupt the old ways with cheap capital and unprofitable prices. Once the old
shops/taxis have died they can raise prices. That isn't fair.

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TeMPOraL
Asking companies to be honest in their copy? Not going to happen.

~~~
hashkb
People who use buzzwords think they are being honest. Or, they look at honesty
differently than some others.

I think the biggest case of "false advertising" is that anyone has ever been
held to account for it.

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jasonmaydie
This is just the normal lifecycle of the internet or just humans in general.
We loved the word disruption a couple of years ago, and now there's a shift to
hate it. We loved apps, now we hate them. We loved IoT now nobody talks about
it. Deep/Machine learning is all the rage.

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0xCMP
The original brainstorm/paper for Amazon was "the everything store." He
started with books and planned to expand in to everything... so yea he
actually did set out to disrupt the whole industry.

Is it the fact that they don't say what they're thinking? Or that they didn't
"honestly think" their companies would disrupt industries?

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jfoutz
VC's respond to marketing. Founders use advertising language. Engineers
annoyed.

Words mean things, but words also have a context. execute means something
different to a programmer than it does to a death row inmate. It's nice to
imagine a world where there is only one true language that is sufficient for
every case, but that's wrong.

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abiox
> Ex Googler says founders need to stop using the word disruption

i'm a bit unclear on the relevance of 'ex googler'. apparently the author of
the wired article was once employed by google, but that doesn't seem germane
to the piece.

edit: looks like the title was updated.

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throwaway2016a
Where is the bar for disruption? The timeline they give is "years if not
decades" which to me says the bar is really high. But there is such a thing as
local disruption which can be a good thing and the bar for that is lower than
Earth shattering disruption.

While I agree we should stop using this in marketing copy, I think they are
useful to use as aspirational internal goals.

They give software engineers, designers, and product owners something to
aspire to. Which is a good thing.

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natch
From the article:

>These founders who actually have disrupted industries and markets were not
grandiose when they started out.

They did not appear grandiose from the outside. But the founders were very
ambitious. With Newmark as an exception among the mentioned examples.

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golemotron
The main thing that needs disruption right now is conglomeration.

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hashkb
Can we stop using all the buzzwords? It will improve synergy.

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gerbilly
>Can we stop using all the buzzwords? It will improve synergy.

Can we stop using all the buzzwords going forward? It will improve synergy
with our deep learning big data blockchain cloud platforms.

FTFY

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ggggtez
That's not the title of the article at all.

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kyrra
It's been fixed. Original HN title: "Ex Googler says founders need to stop
using the word disruption" has been updated to match the article title.

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miguelrochefort
Please don't put all companies in the same basket.

There's a big difference between Instagram and Google.

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devmunchies
Facebook and Google make most of their money from ads. That's a big
similarity. I'd even say that they are each others biggest competitor.

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miguelrochefort
Their business model has NOTHING to do with the legitimacy of a "disruption"
claim.

