From Knowledge@Wharton:
Economic theories emanating from business schools do not usually draw 6,000-word takedowns in the popular press. But then, few ideas have permeated society as thoroughly as the notion of disruptive innovation. The theory describes the way a new product or service transforms an existing market — and eventually replaces and redefines the status quo — by bringing new simplicity, convenience and affordability. In a June 23 article in The New Yorker, Jill Lepore launched an attack on the soundness of the theory itself and the solidity of the scholarship behind it. She also decried the misappropriation of the concept across a variety of arenas beyond pure business.
“The 18th century embraced the idea of progress; the 19th century had evolution; the 20th century had growth and then innovation. Our era has disruption, which, despite its futurism, is atavistic,” wrote Lepore, a Harvard University professor of American history. “It’s a theory of history founded on a profound anxiety about financial collapse, an apocalyptic fear of global devastation and shaky evidence.”
The father of the theory of disruptive innovation, Harvard Business School professor Clayton M. Christensen, who coined the term in his 1997 book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, has offered an initial response to the criticisms in a Bloomberg Businessweek interview. In that piece, Christensen calls Lepore’s article a “criminal act of dishonesty.” He goes on to say that Lepore broke “all of the rules of scholarship that she accused me of breaking — in … truly egregious ways. In fact, every one — every one — of those points that she attempted to make [about The Innovator’s Dilemma] has been addressed in a subsequent book or article. Every one! And if she was truly a scholar as she pretends, she would have read [those].”
Lepore’s polemic may or may not signal the beginning of the end for disruptive innovation as the knee-jerk answer to all institutional ills, but it has undoubtedly given great energy to the discussion of what was once a discrete and considerably more modest theory. “I do think this interaction is healthy in that we are all talking,” says Wharton management professor Rahul Kapoor. “It serves perhaps to discipline the use of the term and the application of the term … closer to what the research meant.”
People now use the term “disruption” in a number of different ways, “and it’s getting sloppy,” notes David Robertson, a Wharton practice professor of operations and information management. “That is a sign of the success of Christensen’s ideas and the widespread adoption. But it’s not fair to lay all the sloppiness at his feet. On the other hand, it is fair to talk about how sloppy the term ‘disruption’ has become, and how we have to worry about [disruptive] technology all over. Poking holes in that [sloppiness] is easy, and it’s a contribution that Lepore did that.” ...MUCH MORE
