Concepts that foster change, upend the status quo and give new life to industries, are always discussed and disputed to seemingly no end. And that’s to be expected, considering that The Economist lists at least six conventional industries that have been eviscerated by digital innovation in the past two decades: music, video-rending, books, taxis, newspapers and clothes retailing.
Whenever change menaces the status quo, there’ll be those that want to keep things exactly the way they are. Furthermore, in an entrepreneurial world where everyone’s racing to build the next big thing, the one thing that will reshape the industry, a lot of people and companies will dilute “big concepts” to fit their purposes. Which is exactly what’s happened to disruption in recent years.
So what is disruption? Hailed by entrepreneurs all over the world as the single greatest means to reshape industries and economies, disruptive innovation has come to mean many different things to different people. Clayton M. Christensen, the Harvard professor that first conceptualised the idea, described it as a “technologically simple innovation in the form of a product, service, or business model that takes root in a tier of the market that is unattractive to the established leaders in an industry.” Seems straightforward enough. However, even this somewhat generalised description has had its fair share of disputes. Especially as technology and entrepreneurial models evolved.
The primary attributes disruptive innovation is universally associated with are:
• the innovative business model
• the innovative product or service and its efficiency
• the product/service’s low cost
• and the all-important potential they have as whole to completely upend the market and replace it with something better and/or (depending on who you ask) completely different.
It should be pretty clear by now that all of these attributes will undeniably lead to different visions in different people and fields. Some argue that only business models can be disruptive, while others, including Christensen himself, say that products or services can be disruptive as well. Some argue that the innovation should be technologically simple, while others believe it can be complex. Most experts believe disruptive products and services should offer cheaper alternatives to what’s on the market, while others believe that they can be more expensive than the ones they’re disrupting.
Mix and match all of these and the end result, the disruptive “combo”, is even harder to assess than its separate parts. To top it all off, many economy and tech journalists are now arguing that disruption is merely a buzzword that should be retired altogether, that disruption is an invalid myth or that it’s a cliche.
Uber is the best example of how different perspectives can completely alter how we see “disruptiveness”. While the biggest entrepreneurship-focused publications often hail the ride-sharing app as the most disruptive business of our time (fighting for the top spot with Airbnb, of course), Clayton Christensen has deemed it unworthy of the title. He says that while Uber is innovative, it’s not disruptive: it’s merely an improvement over the regular old taxi. After his remarks, TechCrunch chimed in with its own take on both Uber’s business model and Christensen’s comments, noting that Christensen is wrong, as the company is claiming bigger and bigger shares of the taxi industry.
You’re probably getting bored or even annoyed by now, which is exactly the type of reaction a lot of experts are having as well. Why bother calling this or that disruptive or not if no one can agree on anything? Why bother ever using the term again? After all, disruptive innovation has existed since, well, economy existed, so why go through the trouble of suddenly classifying businesses so?
The answer is inspiration. Or ambition. Or inventiveness, or drive, or any other word that denotes some actionable way of going about business. As long as there’s a golden standard that everyone, including the haters, can’t help but compare themselves to, companies will keep pushing for more innovation, for better products, for models that will make people’s lives easier than before. After all, Netflix, Spotify, Amazon’s Kindle or Uber may or may not be disruptive, but it’s certainly changed how we see the on-demand video, music, books or transportation industries and how we go about our daily lives.
So aim for disruptive innovation, no matter what that means to you. Whether people call them relevant, myths or empty buzzwords, use every available “big concept” to force yourself to think out of the box and strive for innovation. That’s how successful businesses are made, and that’s how we evolve.
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