Christensen and Disruptive Innovation

Christensen and Disruptive Innovation

        I feel that one of the most important points that Christensen brings up in the Disruption Innovation is a Strategy is that his theory on disruptive innovation is just that, a theory. As he himself states, “We’ve improved our understanding…and we continue to improve it today”. I think that this is a valuable distinction to bring up because a lot of detractors want to point to a single instance and say see it didn’t work in this instance so it must not be true. However, a big problem with Christensen’s theory is that as it got more popular people began to overuse and oversimplify it. Which in turn cause it to be used in ways that was not originally intended. This is a common occurrence one can find in all aspects of life. For example, civil forfeiture laws began as a way to confiscate drug cartel’s money and property. Which made sense at the time since it let the police department’s use the cartel’s own money to help fund operations targeting the cartels. Unfortunately, nowadays those same laws are being used as an excuse to take money and property from innocent citizens simply for the belief that it was being used in a criminal activity. Another important distinction that Christensen brings up is that disruption innovation is about the strategy of how a technology is used, and not the technology itself. This is a big factor that Lepore misses in her criticisms of the theory.

        In the article the Disruption Machine, Lepore pours out many criticisms of the theory. Yet she fails where many others do by not having a clear understanding of the theory and trying to use it in situations it was not meant for. My criticism of Lepore’s article is that she focuses solely on the facts she wants to and conveniently ignores the rest. As proof, she points out that many of the disrupted companies, like Seagate Technology, are still thriving today while some of the disruption companies, like MiniScribe, have gone out of business. While this might seem like a convincing argument it falls flat when one realizes that businesses are complex entities whose outcome relies on many factors. Rome was not built in a day, and it did not fall in a day either. Again, when she brings up about how Christensen’s Disruptive Growth Fund was knee capped after a year, she conveniently glosses over the fact that the massive dot com bubble burst happens eight months later. It would be akin to blaming someone for not getting more of their possession out of their burning house. Many of my criticisms about Lepore’s views are echoed by others in the Disruption Theory Wearing New Clothes article.

        One criticism that the authors mention which escaped me at first was Lepore being critical about the use of 1989 as an endpoint for the analysis of the disk drive industry. As the authors point out it makes sense given that Christensen’s doctoral dissertation was in 1992. As most writers, will admit there comes a point where the actual process of writing takes precedence over gathering additional resources. Also I did find it rather ironic that Lepore’s main issue was claiming the Christensen was cherry picking his sources, and yet it turns out that she never even bothered interviewing Christensen before writing her piece. Like the authors wrote, “she sensationalism over serious academic inquiry”. One criticism that I do agree with is how Christensen chose to have his articles and book released in avenues that did not require any peer review. I have been fortunate during my undergrad years to work as a research assistance for several published articles. Every single one of these articles were subjected to a peer review process. It is just another step you had to take if you wanted your article to be published and more importantly taken seriously. Who knows taking that step might have helped alleviate some of Christensen’s future problems? A rightful criticism of his early work is that he could have better defined his theory and the scope upon which it was meant to be applied. Another area of the theory that could have used more fleshing out is trying to force every innovation into either the sustaining or disruption boxes. He is guilty of what Lepore has done in her criticisms by trying to boil complex situations down to one or two factors. To me that would be like trying to classify every decision as right or wrong, good or evil. Sometimes choices can be both or neither. There is a whole world of grey out there that you are ignoring with those classifications.

        One thing that stood out to me in the Disruption Myth article is that not once did they mention that the use of analytics is a form of disruptive innovation. Yes analytics have been used is some form since the late 1740’s but it is only since the rise of the internet that it has become the powerful tool that it is now. Where it might have taken a person months or even years to collect large amounts of data, this can now be accomplished in a single week. Instead of basing decisions of off just what ifs and gut feelings, businesses were able to back up those feeling with physical data. Oddly enough it was the success of the Oakland A’s sabermetrics, using massive amounts of data to decide operating decision, that helped popularize the importance of analytics. It is now a useful tool that companies can use to identify which competitors are capable of being disruptive and how to in turn mitigate that disruptions. As they say information is power and people today aren’t afraid to wield this power.

        What I really like about the When is a Disruption Innovation Disruptive article, is that it expands on Christensen’s two classifications of disruption. So instead of just sustaining innovation and disruptive innovation they also expand it by adding new market and low end disruption. Like the author states early in the article a disruption innovation, in that it disrupts the current market, is not necessarily a disruptive innovation, as Christensen defines it. In my opinion this helps solve one of Lepore’s criticism of the theory in that it helps better define Christensen’s scope of what a disruptive innovation is. This is turn helps people better apply the theory and this is what the last section of the article focuses one. What I particularly like is their emphasis on sensitivity analyses and the importance of not just collecting the data but having a full grasp of what picture the data is trying to show. You cannot be successful at roulette by basing your bets after previous roles. While yes having a run of four red numbers in a row might make it seem that red is currently the hot bet it still doesn’t change the actual odds on the wheel.

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