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The New Yorker's Takedown Of Disruptive Innovation Is Causing A Huge Stir

Richard Feloni   

The New Yorker's Takedown Of Disruptive Innovation Is Causing A Huge Stir
Strategy5 min read

zucker disrupt

Getty/Max Morse

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference.

The New Yorker's Jill Lepore thinks the theory of disruptive innovation, which contends that industries progress when small upstarts usurp more powerful mainstays by doing something more efficiently and cheaply, has been turned into dogma.

She challenges the father of the theory, Harvard Business School professor Clay Christensen, who wrote the groundbreaking "The Innovator's Dilemma" in 1997.

Lepore writes:

Disruptive innovation as a theory of change is meant to serve both as a chronicle of the past (this has happened) and as a model for the future (it will keep happening). The strength of a prediction made from a model depends on the quality of the historical evidence and on the reliability of the methods used to gather and interpret it. Historical analysis proceeds from certain conditions regarding proof. None of these conditions have been met.

Lepore attempts to poke holes in many of the examples Christensen uses in his book. There's the example of tech hardware manufacturer Seagate delaying production in the '80s of smaller disk drives that could be used for portable computers as opposed to desktop computers, while upstart companies beat them to it. By Christensen's logic, she says, Seagate should have been finished; instead, it's now the world's biggest disk manufacturing company.

Lepore further highlights Christensen's predictions that have proved to be wrong - like his prediction that the iPhone would be a huge failure for Apple - and concludes that the theory of disruptive innovation shouldn't be taken as an accurate predictor of progress, and isn't all that helpful anyway.

After the article was published earlier this week, many influential leaders in the business and journalism communities quickly attacked or defended Lepore's thesis.

Legendary venture capitalist Marc Andreesen took to Twitter after reading the article to show why he thinks Lepore got too caught up in trying to disprove something. Here are some selections from his response (he numbered the posts to indicate they're all part of the same argument):


Vox's Timothy B. Lee thinks that sure, there are plenty of exceptions to the theory of disruption, Christensen has been wrong plenty of times, but that doesn't mean his theory needs to be tossed out. He writes:

It's impossible to talk about what's happening to companies as diverse as Kodak, Microsoft, and the New York Times without the vocabulary and concepts Christensen developed. And while understanding the theory won't solve all the problems these companies face, it will certainly allow them to make more thoughtful decisions than if they follow Lepore's advice and write it off altogether.

Slate's Will Oremus took a snarkier approach. He honed in on Lepore's argument that institutions like the New York Times should not feel they need to significantly adapt to beat sites like Buzzfeed. It's a position even journalism schools like Columbia have let go of for awhile now. Oremus writes:

At this point I couldn't help thinking that her thesis boils down to: "Disruptive innovation is a myth, and also please stop doing it to my industry."

Salon's Andrew Leonard came to Lepore's defense, saying that her essay is not an attack on businesspeople, but a critique of an out-of-control culture:

Lepore is not engaging in an anti-technology screed. She's training her artillery on the way Silicon Valley rationalizes its own behavior as some kind of natural law of progress.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman thinks that Lepore is right to point out that not all of the business world's greatest successes are disruptors, and takes her argument to its logical conclusion:

What's the most remarkable export success story out there? Surely it's Germany, which manages to be an export powerhouse despite very high labor costs. How do the Germans do it? Not by constantly coming out with revolutionary new products, but by producing very high quality goods for which people are willing to pay premium prices.

So here's a revolutionary thought: maybe we need to do less disruption and put more effort into doing whatever we do well.

New York magazine's Kevin Roose thinks that Lepore is right to point out that entrepreneurs' obsession with the word "disrupt" and the idea that the only important new companies are disruptive is silly. He thinks that Lepore's intense focus on this point is distracting her from real and very valuable disruptive companies, like Uber and AirBnB. Stop abusing the word, he writes - even get rid of it completely. But don't dismiss the theory:

The only way to assess the effects of new technologies is to cut the pretense, get rid of the red herrings, and think carefully about what's really at stake. Nothing bothers industry outsiders more than being hammered with meaningless rhetoric, and nothing will slow technological progress more than a refusal to have good-faith conversations with those in power.

Steven Sinfosky, former president of Microsoft's Windows division, went on Twitter to say that both Lepore and Christensen are right, and that Lepore's argument isn't actually new. She's right to point out the theory of disruption is just a theory with plenty of exceptions, he says, but it's a useful theory:

You can read Lepore's controversial article over at The New Yorker.

Disclosure: Marc Andreessen is an investor in Business Insider.

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