Episode 008: Debating Disruption

In this episode we take on the validity of Disruption Theory in three parts:

1. A discussion of Jill Lepore’s New Yorker article attacking disruption, as well as the debate that surrounded the article
2. Ben’s article from last fall “What Clayton Christensen Got Wrong”
3. A deeper discussion about whether or not managers can really do anything about true disruption, and whether or not they should even try

The quote referenced at the ending from Jill Lepore’s article on political polarization is as follows:

“But intellectuals, as Bruno Latour once pointed out, are nearly always one critique too late: “entire Ph.D. programs are still running to make sure that good American kids are learning the hard way that facts are made up, that there is no such thing as natural, unmediated, unbiased access to truth, that we are always prisoners of language, that we always speak from a particular standpoint, and so on, while dangerous extremists are using the very same argument of social construction to destroy hard-won evidence that could save our lives.”

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Links

• Jill Lepore: The Disruption Machine – The New Yorker
• Jill Lepore: Long Division – The New Yorker
• Larissa MacFarquhar: When Giants Fall. What business has learned from Clayton Christensen – The New Yorker
• Ben Thompson: Obsoletive – Stratechery
• Ben Thompson: What Clayton Christensen Got Wrong – Stratechery
• Clayton Christensen: The Innovator’s Solution – Kindle
• Phil Rosenzweig: The Halo Effect – Kindle

Hosts

• Ben Thompson, @monkbent, Stratechery
• James Allworth, @jamesallworth, Harvard Business Review

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