Disrupt has always been a strange name for the conference since almost every startup showing there has been a clone of another larger more popular startup.
I have literally had conversations with founders there that went,
"So tell me how you are different from Facebook,"
"Well we built our entire platform on node so it is infinitely scalable"
"Is that a problem with Facebook now? That it doesn't scale?"
"Well no, but we also re-imagined the interface"
"It looks like facebook, if Facebook was done in Twitter Bootstrap"
"That's exactly Right!"
"Did users ask for that?"
"Well No, but we also added support for sharing code snippets"
"That's interesting, so it is really a Facebook for Developer communities"
"Well No..."
"Do you think most people's mom and 4th grade english teacher want to see the code snippets in your timeline?"
"We don't really have a timeline, everything shared happens in realtime like the front page of hacker news"
"So if my friends want to see the pictures I took last week of my trip to Belize they can't see them?"
If you want to be disruptive you have to do something truly new. Something that will change the way everyone else does things. You also have to be prepared for all the knock-offs that might have better marketing, or better connections, so you should also have a bit of something no one can duplicate in your core.
The Disrupt conference has always been a showing of MVP's and betas that aren't even an MVP. But disruption occurs when you have something that is more than an MVP it is a Product no one can live without afterwards.
That's not the definition of "disrupt" used by Christensen (or by Yglesias in this article). Yglesias is arguing that we should return to the useful definition of disrupt as developing a product that is worse in most respects compared to existing products, except on price (and possibly size/portability). The quality you're talking about is something like "revolutionary," not disruptive.
I think the problem lies in the fact that to "disrupt" the right industries, you need to have some experience in dinosaur industries/companies that could use better solutions.
Most young, talented developers never held a job inside one of those places in their lives, hence why they build Facebook clones instead.
Honestly, seek out some soul-sucking corporate job for a summer and see what you could do to improve the operations with software/hardware.
A good example is Shakr, a "social online hangout" which won Disrupt SF in 2011 [1] and raised $15M immediately after. Robert Scoble said it would become a $100M company.
The drama around words like this is between people who don't actually use the concepts they represent. The words "disrupt", "synergy", and "cloud" are useful words ONLY if:
- You care about the high level strategies a startup might implement in order to take on an entrenched player who is playing a game no one can beat them at.
- You are seeking mutually beneficial intra-business relationships.
- You would like to provision machines without managing them yourself.
Journalists and non-practitioners fight back and forth about words like this because they have no skin in the game. I will continue happily using the word "disrupt" because I read the Innovator's Dilemma and I think Christensen highlighted a powerful concept that needed a label. And I will continue using the word "cloud" because I remember what it was like to have to buy a dedicated server every time I wanted to spin up a new service.
And I could give a rat's ass if some journalist thinks that's hokem.
> Journalists and non-practitioners fight back and forth about words like this because they have no skin in the game
Actually I think that the real problem is with unscrupulous marketing from practitioners than with journalists and non-practitioners. When a word becomes a trend, everybody wants in, so the word is stretched so much that it loses its original usefulness.
Take cloud for example - what does it really mean today? Even the usual old VPS today is marketed as a "cloud" solution...
The author also clearly stated that "disruptive" is indeed a powerful concept that needed a label. And he clearly stated that it should still be used in cases where it actually fits the model that Christensen intended. The whole premise of the article is that most people are using the term in cases where the concept doesn't match up at all, and I don't see how you're refuting that.
To a degree, he makes a valid point. Take the news industry. It most certainly is not any better at delivering informed content to users. Does it deliver content faster? Sure. Is it easier to get to it? Absolutely. But the natural constraints of the print editorial cycle forced journalists to wait before spraying us all with their breathless commentary. It used to be that editors were tasked with getting things right. Now they're just tasked with getting things out the door quickly so that they can maximize online ad revenue.
They're not actually 'maximizing ad revenue.' They're usually trying to maximize pageviews. Understanding that distinction seems to be beyond a lot of the online media business these days.
It'd be nice if startups in general took a step back and toned stuff down. Be ambitious and optimistic without pretending your website and the guy who's going to tweak it are solving Very Hard Problems, changing the world and of course disrupting whatever multi-billion dollar industry.
Those startups are the exception not the rule, if you're the only one saying it you're not really doing it.
I don't disagree with what you're saying, but startups are hard. There's lots of ups and downs and getting people to buy into a vision of the world is a lot more comforting when you're working long days and weekends than thinking "gee I love slight iterations for profitable/quick exits". So while I agree with you, I understand why people do it.
Two thoughts: a lot of startups probably are low key, but you don't hear about them on the media circuit for obvious reasons; also, the process of raising money has a tendency to spiral into hyperbole.
I agree with the sentiment that not everything has to be disruptive to be successful, and it might even be important to distinguish between the two for your own mental stability (a modesty check, if you will), but I don't think it matters in the end to the industry. The concept of disruptive technology doesn't go away because the term is overused, and the brilliance of innovation doesn't depend on the accuracy of the terms used to define it.
But disruptive inventions are not necessarily brilliant. Modesty should have nothing to do with it. Certainly the iPhone can be brilliant without being disruptive.
If using a word, such as "disruptive", will give you a small gain in marketing advantage, or the lack of will give you a disadvantage, then people will always spam/abuse it until it becomes a meaningless buzzword, or until investor grew earwax to protect themselves from it, or until it is perceived that anyone uses this word is most likely BSing. Then people are going to adapt away from using such a word. Most people probably understand that their stuff isn't the next facebook, but they will try everything to get the last bit of investor attention.
There must be one of those standard quippy hacker "laws" about the usefulness of new conceptual term being directly correlated to the rate that it will be diluted into meaninglessness in the hands of progressively declining foodchain of marketing goons.
I always thought people shouted the "Help us Disrupt" thing because they want people to shift to them because they are 'better' than the evil mega-corps and 'have the best interest of their users at heart' instead of, you know, actually having a better offering at a lower cost.
Like companies like TechCrunch who co-opt words like "disrupt" for their flaccid marketing purposes? The world of TC is the world of wannabes.
If there's one thing TC always wanted for itself but as a section of the peanut gallery they could never have, is an ability to "disrupt" anything. Obviously they needed to turn that inferiority boat into dollars, with Arrington as cartographer for the sailing map.
"Disruption" rhetoric reminds me of those clerics in the Middle East who preach peace and forgiveness in English and war and vengeance in their native tongue in the same speech.
Founders who give a shit about TechCrunch want to be corporate. (There are many founders who don't, and I'm not talking about them.) They want in the club. They use "disruption" rhetoric to inspire 22-year-old engineers to work 90-hour-weeks, but what they really want is to join what they feint against on stage, and they profit immensely from the sale of young, clueless talent ($5 million per head acq-hires where those engineers themselves are lucky to get $47) is their way of getting there.
It can be both. For example, if you find a better way to run a 'newspaper,' then you're disrupting an existing industry, but you could also be trailblazing in the way that you approach it (i.e. a way that no one as ever tried before).
Funny, I was just today thinking about the overuse of another word: "hacker", after seeing another job posting here for a programmer, but using that word.
It's been abused so much that I am not even sure what it means any more. But, when I read the job descriptions, there's generally nothing beyond a standard programmer that is being sought. If every programmer is now supposedly a hacker, then what's the point of the word?
Smells more like companies just trying to sound cool, which of course has the opposite effect and is annoying to boot.
The fact that we are encouraged to celebrate disruption and people are even using the term in their branding is testament to the dearth of true innovation.
So many startups are busy trying to one-up existing products and services, but relatively few seem to be trying to create new products/services/markets.
[+] [-] brandon_wirtz|13 years ago|reply
I have literally had conversations with founders there that went,
"So tell me how you are different from Facebook,"
"Well we built our entire platform on node so it is infinitely scalable"
"Is that a problem with Facebook now? That it doesn't scale?"
"Well no, but we also re-imagined the interface"
"It looks like facebook, if Facebook was done in Twitter Bootstrap"
"That's exactly Right!"
"Did users ask for that?"
"Well No, but we also added support for sharing code snippets"
"That's interesting, so it is really a Facebook for Developer communities"
"Well No..."
"Do you think most people's mom and 4th grade english teacher want to see the code snippets in your timeline?"
"We don't really have a timeline, everything shared happens in realtime like the front page of hacker news"
"So if my friends want to see the pictures I took last week of my trip to Belize they can't see them?"
If you want to be disruptive you have to do something truly new. Something that will change the way everyone else does things. You also have to be prepared for all the knock-offs that might have better marketing, or better connections, so you should also have a bit of something no one can duplicate in your core.
The Disrupt conference has always been a showing of MVP's and betas that aren't even an MVP. But disruption occurs when you have something that is more than an MVP it is a Product no one can live without afterwards.
[+] [-] gottagetmac|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ErikAugust|13 years ago|reply
Most young, talented developers never held a job inside one of those places in their lives, hence why they build Facebook clones instead.
Honestly, seek out some soul-sucking corporate job for a summer and see what you could do to improve the operations with software/hardware.
[+] [-] minimaxir|13 years ago|reply
Yeah...
[1] http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/14/and-the-winner-of-techcrunc...
[+] [-] erikpukinskis|13 years ago|reply
- You care about the high level strategies a startup might implement in order to take on an entrenched player who is playing a game no one can beat them at.
- You are seeking mutually beneficial intra-business relationships.
- You would like to provision machines without managing them yourself.
Journalists and non-practitioners fight back and forth about words like this because they have no skin in the game. I will continue happily using the word "disrupt" because I read the Innovator's Dilemma and I think Christensen highlighted a powerful concept that needed a label. And I will continue using the word "cloud" because I remember what it was like to have to buy a dedicated server every time I wanted to spin up a new service.
And I could give a rat's ass if some journalist thinks that's hokem.
[+] [-] danmaz74|13 years ago|reply
Actually I think that the real problem is with unscrupulous marketing from practitioners than with journalists and non-practitioners. When a word becomes a trend, everybody wants in, so the word is stretched so much that it loses its original usefulness.
Take cloud for example - what does it really mean today? Even the usual old VPS today is marketed as a "cloud" solution...
[+] [-] sutterbomb|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhizome|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelochurch|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MisterBastahrd|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stackedmidgets|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] benologist|13 years ago|reply
Those startups are the exception not the rule, if you're the only one saying it you're not really doing it.
[+] [-] jsonne|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dasil003|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lost_name|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeremyjh|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhizome|13 years ago|reply
this is seriously amateur framing.
[+] [-] equilibrium|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bwang8|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dasil003|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asperous|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xradionut|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhizome|13 years ago|reply
If there's one thing TC always wanted for itself but as a section of the peanut gallery they could never have, is an ability to "disrupt" anything. Obviously they needed to turn that inferiority boat into dollars, with Arrington as cartographer for the sailing map.
[+] [-] andrewtbham|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrewtbham|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelochurch|13 years ago|reply
Founders who give a shit about TechCrunch want to be corporate. (There are many founders who don't, and I'm not talking about them.) They want in the club. They use "disruption" rhetoric to inspire 22-year-old engineers to work 90-hour-weeks, but what they really want is to join what they feint against on stage, and they profit immensely from the sale of young, clueless talent ($5 million per head acq-hires where those engineers themselves are lucky to get $47) is their way of getting there.
[+] [-] zobzu|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saraid216|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amkassim|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rektide|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dirkgently|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spoiledtechie|13 years ago|reply
I am Pioneering something!
I am trail blazing. I am the one not following the pack. I am the one going in the opposite direction.
[+] [-] minimaxir|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pyre|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] planetmcd|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] disruptu|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unclebucknasty|13 years ago|reply
It's been abused so much that I am not even sure what it means any more. But, when I read the job descriptions, there's generally nothing beyond a standard programmer that is being sought. If every programmer is now supposedly a hacker, then what's the point of the word?
Smells more like companies just trying to sound cool, which of course has the opposite effect and is annoying to boot.
[+] [-] unclebucknasty|13 years ago|reply
So many startups are busy trying to one-up existing products and services, but relatively few seem to be trying to create new products/services/markets.
[+] [-] saraid216|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xnxn|13 years ago|reply