Interrupting the Disruption and Getting Back to Innovation

One of the quintessential reads for technology strategists is "The Innovator's Dilemma" by Clayton Christensen. It portrays the concept of disruptive innovation, an unexpected change opening up new markets and ecosystems, unlocking value difficult for most to access in an old market.

Technologists (me included) became enamored with the concept. Christensen captured what we saw occuring around us for decades, starting with the birth of the transistor and everything it spawned. The arrival of the microprocessor and the innovation of the personal computer defined a generation, and made heroes and fortunes.

But somewhere along the path, we - not Christensen, but the rest of us - confused disruptive innovation with plain old disruption.

Disruption is a familiar mechanism in storytelling. Take Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan. After driving into the nebula to equalize the odds by rendering sensors mostly useless, Kirk predictably becomes impatient with the game of hide and seek. Wanting to regain tactical advantage, he wonders where the next attack will come from. Spock offers a tactical assessment of the opponent.

He is intelligent, but inexperienced.
His pattern indicates … two dimensional thinking.

The next command is Z minus 10,000 meters, engineering speak for a three dimensional move. Disruption for the win: a harmless flyover, a move to six o'clock position, fire all weapons, listen as villain quotes Moby Dick, flee from weapon of mass destruction, realize the costs, bury a hero, live to play again.

Clichés for disruption have sprung up all over business literature: "change the game", "think out of the box", "break the mold", "leapfrog the competition" and other rallying cries have been heard in every conference room.

A prime example is Amazon, who surveyed the landscape and aggregated choices into a massive disruption that eventually wiped out bookstore chains, damaged electronics retailers, shifted a market from "web hosting" to "cloud computing", and messed up publishing to the point where the disrupter can now afford to buy the disruptee. Some would say this is disruptive innovation, but it fails the Christensen test: it didn't improve market access in most cases, with the exception of Amazon Web Services and EC2. It just redirected the ecosystem and money towards Amazon.

It paid to be disruptive, for a while, until everyone was trying to do it. If everyone is constantly attempting to disrupt each other in a confused melee, the narrative becomes less like Star Trek with a decisive victory and more like Sons of Anarchy: a lot of activity, but few lasting outcomes - just more instability.

Jeff Bezos may have come to exactly the same conclusion I have: we can't afford to disrupt everything anymore. A newspaper, even one in the seat of political power, seems an odd purchase for an online magnate. But if there is anyone who understands this disruption, it should be the guy who created it. Reviving an institution like the Washington Post, and solving the dilemma of how print and online news can work in harmony, is an immense challenge. I hope he succeeds in the effort, and in the process finds a way to stabilize the publishing industry.

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Editor's Note: CR4 would like to thank Don Dingee for sharing this post. You can read the original on his blog.