[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...

[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.

[Tloewald]

It seems to me that Christensen's theories have always been post-facto hooey. Indeed, the ultimate irony is that he has ridden a wave of success essentially by being credited with "explaining" Apple's success when he not only didn't, but can't even explain it post-facto, and — as the article points out — was hilariously and embarrassingly wrong about the iPhone. What this article points out is that he was wrong even about the very cases (hard drives and steam shovels) on which he built his theory, having cherry picked data and defined his terms to suit his conclusions like a champion.

There are definite insights in his books. I've seen the issues he discusses at play first hand. But for every incumbent disrupted by a feisty startup, there are plenty who are absorbed by incumbents, or have a short spectacular success followed by a flameout, while the incumbents trudge on at their own pace.

[lclarkmichalek]

Why do you believe that the fact that the critiques use education as an example is proof that the critiques are knee jerk/defensive reactions to disruption in a space, and not simply due to that being the industry that the author (given they are an academic) has the most experience/exposure in?

[jval]

You're right, it is an inductive assertion based off the quality of the piece and its focus, the author's profession and the author's background so I'm uncertain about that. I'm more keen on highlighting the fact that I think technology is getting scapegoated as the enemy in academia because two groups of people see the problem differently and are talking past each other.

[dbingham]

The view that education is or should be a job certification factory is one of the biggest problems with American education today and one of the reasons we don't have a democracy. Education should be about teaching people how to learn, how to teach themselves, how to think critically, and how to challenge both authority and their own ideas. That's what a liberal arts degree once aspired to be. That what a high school education should be, but really never has been. University should not be a job certification factory. We have trade schools and apprenticeships for that.

[jrochkind1]

It doens't neccesarily have to have predictive power to be useful....

But it seems pretty unclear if the theory of disruptive innovation has any predictive power at all.

You seem to be avoiding coming down on one side or the other. Do you think the theory has predictive power? If so, on what basis do you think that?

[jval]

I do think it has predictive power, in the narrow areas in which it can be applied. I think if you're a media executive and you've seen what's happened to the NYT, you know that newspapers aren't the only media vertical that is going to face the problem of disruption. Thinking behind it is probably what's driving deals like the purchase of Maker Studios by Disney[1] - if Disney just wanted to innovate they would have just invested in better digital content delivery. Buying Maker acknowledges that lots of lower quality content producers can acquire the same audiences as high quality large budget Disney productions like Hannah Montana.

You don't see disruption everywhere, for example Google and Facebook are hardly 'disruptive' as companies, but I think in the right cases the theory has predictive power and is a necessary tool in the belt of people who work in technology.

1. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/25/business/media/disney-buys...

[hyp0]

Reading his books, my overwhelming impression is that it's unclear if there's any predictive power. I'm unsure how you'd go about demonstrating it one way or the other - but that's Christensen's job. That he hasn't done it is telling. [ He does seem to be trying to push it as an all-encompassing theory, to be "people buy what they want" (and redefining "technology" more abstractly in subsequent editions, to include any way of doing any thing). And he's got that consultancy going... always good for "truth"... ]

However, I'm not sure how you see Google as not disruptive...? By revenue, it's an advertising company, and a different ballgame from print media etc. (advertisers get live feedback on performance - focus groups can't match that). The bidding idea is also brillant (from goto/overture) - google gets the highest possible price, but your competitor is the bad guy. Though I guess you might say it's the internet that's disruptive, and google's just along for the ride.