The Disruption Machine
What the gospel of innovation gets wrong

“Disruption is a theory of change founded on panic, anxiety, and shaky evidence.” -Jill Lepore

A lengthy counter-point by Jill Lepore to the concept that disruption is a long-term solution to instill innovation and change runs up against an argument by The New Yorker’s Jill Lepore.

Lepore tackles Clayton M. Christensen’s idea of “disruptive innovation” he introduced in his 1997 book, “The Innovator’s Dilemma.” Lepore and Christensen are both Harvard faculty professors.

At the time Christensen’s book came out, I was working as a Client Accounts Manager for a small advertising agency that later became a subsidiary of a global advertising behemoth that had jumped head first into the new and exciting world of internet advertising and the inklings of what would become the social media gold rush (Who wants to advertise on MySpace?).

Our agency was so high tech that we had 56k baud modems and later upgraded to 128k baud modems in the same year! We were hot stuff and we made sure all of our clients knew it (and their competitors).

My boss got ahold of “The Innovators’s Dilemma” and was immediately hooked and professed to each and every client disruption and change was the mantra for the future if they wanted to stay in business. We began forays in online sales and direct marketing, distributive ad buys among multiple clients; you name it, we probably tried it.

The short end of the story (unlike Lepore’s, but hers is actually worth reading) is that a business’ future relied more on their core values and product than changing things for the sake of changing things. And without fail, all the strong players, while slow to start, still ended up strong players at the end of day because they too innovated and did many of the same things our client did, in fact, some clients were purchased by their competitors and just simply absorbed.

Disruption innovation is a short-term effect. Can it spur change? Yes. Does it spur long lasting change? Sometimes.

When like minded groups imitate one another, disruption is no longer a player – it becomes the status quo.