Reminds me of "going viral" and how everyone kept saying: "let's create a viral video".
Disruption is not a strategy
21–30 of 35 posts
Re: Disruption is not a strategy
#22Christensen’s theory is descriptive, not prescriptive. It names a process but does not tell you how to generate that process
Something similar has been said of Marxism, in that it's an interesting way to think about what has come before, but has no grounding when it tries to talk about what should happen in the future.
Re: Disruption is not a strategy
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a huge difference between "tackling the problem differently than their competitors" and "tackling the problem differently in a way that their competitors can't imitate easily without sacrificing their assets". The latter is disruptive, the former is just what doing business means. I think Uber does fit into the latter. Just to be clear, I do agree with your general tone of the article, it's just that your Ube…
Uber succeeded mostly by violating local licensing laws. And federal employment laws which they may still need to pay the piper for.
Exactly, that's why the incumbents couldn't replicate them, because they had to stay legal. Let's not go into whether this is ethical or not. I'm simply pointing out what disruptive means.
Re: Disruption is not a strategy
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a huge difference between "tackling the problem differently than their competitors" and "tackling the problem differently in a way that their competitors can't imitate easily without sacrificing their assets". The latter is disruptive, the former is just what doing business means. I think Uber does fit into the latter. Just to be clear, I do agree with your general tone of the article, it's just that your Ube…
Uber succeeded mostly by violating local licensing laws. And federal employment laws which they may still need to pay the piper for.
> violating local licensing laws
They recognized that the local licensing laws were causing horrible market distortions or outright market dysfunctions. The salient points are the market dysfunctions. Where is the market failing and causing misery? What businesses/organizations have captive customer bases, really don't care about bad user experiences, and have outdated equipment?
20th century cabs were miserable, and even faced with competition, taxis are slow to adapt, have outdated technology, and persist in poor user experiences.
Re: Disruption is not a strategy
#25There's something important in the latter half of this: understanding that this isn't useful as a guide, but as a warning. No-one realistically sets out to create "a Google". People set out to solve a problem. Sometimes that problem turns out to fuel vast business, sometimes not. You can guess at the size, but sometimes you're going to be wrong (hello Twitter). You can aim to replace a business, but it's near impossi…
I think this is changing and a company like Google can see what we call "the future", based on virtually infinite data points. I am not saying that these data points are all possible futures but they give a clear advantage over entrepreneurs with minimal data. True, you can't predict the real future but Intel could act earlier with more information. Andy Grove wrote about this on his "paranoid book".
Google can see what we call "the future", based on virtually infinite data points.
If Google can manage them usefully, those points are clearly not virtually infinite. (Otherwise, you're diluting the meaning of the word.)
Re: Disruption is not a strategy
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
>No-one realistically sets out to create "a Google" but lots of people unrealistically set out to create "a Google" and some of them succeed. Who never would have if they had had a realistic goal. my goals are completely unrealistic. most people with such goals fail completely.
Even if you succeed, that's anecdotal. Telling others to do the same wouldn't be good advice, in the same way as a lottery winner telling others to play wouldn't.
If one in ten thousand people who set out to create a billion dollars of value for society and themselves succeed, and the others fail but use the skills they learned to lead gainfully employed, happy lives, why is that not good advice? Society nets a billion dollars, and the expected return is let's say 1b/10k = $100k, though the distribution of outcomes is skewed. So why not? What's the objection?
Re: Disruption is not a strategy
#27Although I agree that having a business plan that's based on nothing more than a concept of "being disruptive" is not much of a plan at all, I feel that in some parts, he's picking a strawman and arguing against that. He claims that "I’m sure what the presenter of the slide was getting at was Clayton Christensen’s definition of disruption from his classic book The Innovator’s Dilemma. ". He then goes on to say (talki…
OP. Meh, every single startup I've seen in the past 25 years has claimed that they are tackling their problem differently than their competitors in some way. If this is what disruption means, then it's the quintessential distinction without a difference. It's the entrepreneurs' equivalent of a VC saying "we add value." A waste of pixels. And if that's the entire content of your strategy--you think being different is…
Like I say, I'm not disagreeing with the idea that "we will disrupt" on its own is no more use as a business case than "we will make wads of cash".
What I am questioning is the idea that there's only one way to disrupt an industry - to be cheaper and in some way subpar compared to the incumbent. You seem to be suggesting that the taxi industry hasn't been disrupted by Uber, because it doesn't align with one person's definition of what disruption looks like. And I don't really understand that. There's clearly been huge disruption there.
Re: Disruption is not a strategy
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
OP. Meh, every single startup I've seen in the past 25 years has claimed that they are tackling their problem differently than their competitors in some way. If this is what disruption means, then it's the quintessential distinction without a difference. It's the entrepreneurs' equivalent of a VC saying "we add value." A waste of pixels. And if that's the entire content of your strategy--you think being different is…
There's a huge difference between "tackling the problem differently than their competitors" and "tackling the problem differently in a way that their competitors can't imitate easily without sacrificing their assets". The latter is disruptive, the former is just what doing business means. I think Uber does fit into the latter. Just to be clear, I do agree with your general tone of the article, it's just that your Ube…
> tackling the problem differently in a way that their competitors can't imitate easily without sacrificing their assets
That isn't enough. You have to tackle the problem differently in a way that matters to the market. It has to show up somewhere, in terms of price, features, or quality.
Re: Disruption is not a strategy
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
OP. Meh, every single startup I've seen in the past 25 years has claimed that they are tackling their problem differently than their competitors in some way. If this is what disruption means, then it's the quintessential distinction without a difference. It's the entrepreneurs' equivalent of a VC saying "we add value." A waste of pixels. And if that's the entire content of your strategy--you think being different is…
There's a huge difference between "tackling the problem differently than their competitors" and "tackling the problem differently in a way that their competitors can't imitate easily without sacrificing their assets". The latter is disruptive, the former is just what doing business means. I think Uber does fit into the latter. Just to be clear, I do agree with your general tone of the article, it's just that your Ube…
Sure, but tackling a problem in a way that your competition can't respond well to is called a strategy. I mean, you can define disruption any way you want, but keep in mind that the reason people use the word disruption when they mean strategy is because they imbue the word with magic power, not because it communicates anything meaningful.
Re: Disruption is not a strategy
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Uber succeeded mostly by violating local licensing laws. And federal employment laws which they may still need to pay the piper for.
> violating local licensing laws They recognized that the local licensing laws were causing horrible market distortions or outright market dysfunctions. The salient points are the market dysfunctions. Where is the market failing and causing misery? What businesses/organizations have captive customer bases, really don't care about bad user experiences, and have outdated equipment? 20th century cabs were miserable, and…
most small businesses do it they pay fines and penalties of 100% or more. They were able to play politics and won, congrats to them. didn't work so well for theranos, lending club, zenefits.