[justAlittleCom]

I think disruption is a very nice and simple concept, very powerful, and so overused… Its not a synonym for "new and successful". How Instagram is a disruptive innovation? Its a real question, maybe it is, and I am just too old to figure it out.

[jamesrcole]

The linked speech says "A disruptive idea means it also upsets current ways of thinking, or current values, or current markets"

It explains why Instagram fits this definition: "Nikon and Canon have spent 80 years refining their cameras to produce good pictures. Instagram gives you a hundred ways to turn a good picture into a bad picture. The art world is built on a tradition of curation - by schools, museums, galleries, and critics. Instagram lets you upload every picture you take, to the public, within 5 seconds of taking it. Curation is done by "liking" a picture someone else has posted. And Instagram is free."

To me that seems reasonable enough. It's not implying anything about the value of the disruption.

[justAlittleCom]

Disruption talks more about "what the thing did to everything" than about the "what the thing does to whoever use it". Bicycle is considered a disruption because everyone had one as soon as it was invented, supersonic privet jet are not. Maybe Instagram does new things, but that's not what would make it disruptive, only the impact it had, would. That impact is not obvious to me.

[donclark]

I agree. I would like to be able to go to a website where there is a discussion around a site on how it is disruptive or innovative (why and/or why not). Reddit/Wikipedia/or?