Jill Lepore Fails to Disrupt Disruption

[BvBPL]

Jill Lepore tries to break down disruption philosophy in a recent New Yorker article attacking. She lays bare the smoke and mirrors proffered by disruption apostle Clayton M. Christensen by showing his cherry picking of examples from history to support the philosophy.

I'm afraid she didn't do much to actually convince people.

The problem is that Lepore makes a lot of rational, fair-minded arguments. Those rational arguments aren't persuasive to people who have accepted disruption because disruption is an emotional philosophy. Disruptionists in the tech sector are not dissimilar from a polo-clad Gordon Gecko shouting to the world that greed is good. The philosophy tells people to get theirs, now! It says that if you aren't successful then you aren't doing it right. It is the new Calvinism where we will know the righteous by the size of their bank accounts. Rational arguments don't work on the Chosen Ones.

 

[Glassfan]

So, you're actually praising Jill's failure because she's trying to debunk a cult. In a variation of "Those who can't do, teach," we apparently have a class of salesmen who follow the paradigm, "Those who can't profit, preach." Also a class of mediocre geniuses who are always desperate to jump on the latest pseudo-intellectual bandwagon.

Interesting article though. One wonders how companies like Procter and Gamble continue to survive, cranking out the same old products century after century...

 

[plarq]

Because human needs have not evolved fast enough?

 

[Tarquelne]

Reading about disruption theory made me undergo a paradigm shift.


Business people seem to have a strong need to explain big changes.

Sorry, everybody has that. Business people seem to have a strong need to attach a buzzword and a fad theory to the idea that - to use another buzz-phrase - "everything is fire."

 

[Hygro]

Reading about disruption theory made me undergo a paradigm shift.


Business people seem to have a strong need to explain big changes. themselves.

FTFY ;D

 

[GoodSarmatian]

I don't really see the difference between disruption and creative destruction. I just looks like re-labeling to me.
What am I mising ?

 

[nc-1701]

After skimming the linked article and the Wikipedia page, disruption theory appears to both trivially true, and utterly useless.
The claim that disruptive technologies occur and can completely reshape the market is obvious. However that makes no useful predictions, leaving us with only the statement: "economies and business can be chaotic and have sudden major shifts." Which is both obvious and not particularly enlightening.

 

[Tarquelne]

It just looks like re-labeling to me.
What am I mising ?

There's a lot of money in re-labeling.

 

[Hygro]

After skimming the linked article and the Wikipedia page, disruption theory appears to both trivially true, and utterly useless.
The claim that disruptive technologies occur and can completely reshape the market is obvious. However that makes no useful predictions, leaving us with only the statement: "economies and business can be chaotic and have sudden major shifts." Which is both obvious and not particularly enlightening.

Indeed, and I would like to add that increasing the rate of market disruption doesn't by any means increase rate of economic improvement.