Myths around Disruption

As mental concepts get spread around the world, there meaning and definition changes, often dramatically, influenced not so much by time and distance but by cognitive focus and culture.

"Disruptive Innovation" is a concept coined by Professor Clayton M. Christensen a modern revolutionary business thinker. Unfortunately even Christensen now believes the term 'disruptive' or 'disruption' has been obscured by previous standard dictionary definitions to mean something that is obtrusive, radical, disobedient or "way out". As a result the Christensen meaning of disruption, for those further down the whisper chain, has been lost. Christensen was unfortunately too humble to name it something else less confusing, like the 'Christensen Effect'. But why is this significant ?

Disruption, according to Christensen, describes the process of how one industry or class of companies (such as all the music shops) are replaced by a whole new breed of company (such as iTunes or Spotify). The thing is that Disruption can, is and will happen in pretty much every existing industry, however unpopular this is to believe. 

Instead the definition of Disruption is presumed to mean 'a way-out or radical business idea', or 'a big change', or when one compay that 'takes on' another that results in a change (or derivative change) in a process or product or service. Another belief is that disruption is synomous with innovation. But all this is simply misrepresentation of the true menaing of disruption. Thus the important lessons to be learned from Christensen go unlearned and or miss-understood.  

Lets take a shot of how you should think about disruption......

For those sitting in large companies
In human and financial terms, disruption, or in this case "being disrupted", means a collective class of companies all going out of business, with obvious massive negative societal effects on employees and their families, not to mention the financial consequences for the other financial stakeholders of these companies.

For Entrepreneurs and innovators
As devastating disruption is for the disrupted, it is conversely beneficial for the entrepreneurs and innovators that cause it, as these people and organisations, get to own some or most of the new paradigm industry. Disruption is essentially the 'Holy Grail' of Entrepreneurship. When you understand its dynamics as an entrepreneur, you have a tremendous motivation and understanding to take over whole industries.

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Other articles in my blog will be on the same general concepts of Disruption as I try to explain it in terms for others to understand. 

/Hugh Anthony