Creative Destruction - Revision history

Tom: /* Others on Disruption */

2026-03-23T00:23:55Z

‎Others on Disruption

Tom at 04:36, 8 April 2025

2025-04-08T04:36:21Z

Tom at 04:30, 8 April 2025

2025-04-08T04:30:39Z

Tom: /* Context */

2025-04-08T04:26:26Z

‎Context

Tom: /* Lepore disrupts Christensen */

2025-04-08T04:09:50Z

‎Lepore disrupts Christensen

Tom: /* Lepore disrupts Christensen */

2025-04-08T04:03:50Z

‎Lepore disrupts Christensen

Tom: /* Context */

2025-04-08T03:51:41Z

‎Context

Tom: /* Others on Disruption */

2025-04-08T01:36:02Z

‎Others on Disruption

Tom: /* References */

2025-04-08T01:25:07Z

‎References

Tom: /* Lapore disrupts Christensen */

2021-02-10T17:00:50Z

‎Lapore disrupts Christensen

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 But it quickly became apparent that people wanted to talk—to socialize. One phone company manager in 1909 did a survey of usage and found that 30 percent of all calls were “idle gossip,” lasting 7.5 minutes on average each. He didn’t like this chitchat, but he was running against the stream. Eventually phone firms realized there was more money in selling lines for banter than for business. “They realized, ‘We can make money off gossip and idle conversation and sociability on the telephone,’” says Claude Fischer, author of America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940.</blockquote>
 Clive Thompson ''Texting Isn’t the First New Technology Thought to Impair Social Skills When Alexander Graham Bell introduced the telephone, skeptics worried about how it might affect people’s interactions'' Smithsonian Magazine 2016-03 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/texting-isnt-first-new-technology-thought-impair-social-skills-180958091/
 ==References==

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 In education, we have seen the dogma of disruption in the policies of Arne Duncan, the Bloomberg administration of education in New York City (with its focus on closing schools and opening schools and closing the schools it opened), the Rahm Emanuel model (closing 50 public schools on the same day), the Broad Foundation, the Gates Foundation, the Walton Foundation, and business groups. They scorn incremental change and pursue the disruptive idea–like closing schools, the Common Core, federally funded tests–that will shake up schools across the nation with a series of bold and experimental strokes.
-Lepore, it can be fairly said, demolishes disruption theory by showing that Christensen’s examples provide no evidence for the theory. To the contrary, the successful companies over the long haul were not the innovators that disrupted the industry, but those that changed incrementally, tinkering and constantly improving their processes and their products. One of Christensen’s leading examples of disruption was the disk-drive industry. This was the subject of his doctoral dissertation. In his telling, a company called Seagate Technology fell by the wayside as competitors disrupted its market. But, Lepore shows, Christensen was wrong.<ref>Jill Lapore, ''The Disruption Machine'' (2014-06-16) The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/06/23/the-disruption-machine </ref>
+Lepore, it can be fairly said, demolishes disruption theory by showing that Christensen’s examples provide no evidence for the theory. To the contrary, the successful companies over the long haul were not the innovators that disrupted the industry, but those that changed incrementally, tinkering and constantly improving their processes and their products. One of Christensen’s leading examples of disruption was the disk-drive industry. This was the subject of his doctoral dissertation. In his telling, a company called Seagate Technology fell by the wayside as competitors disrupted its market. But, Lepore shows, Christensen was wrong.<ref>Jill Lepore, ''The Disruption Machine'' (2014-06-16) The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/06/23/the-disruption-machine </ref>
 <blockquote>In fact, Seagate Technology was not felled by disruption. Between 1989 and 1990, its sales doubled, reaching $2.4 billion, “more than all of its U.S. competitors combined,” according to an industry report. In 1997, the year Christensen published “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” Seagate was the largest company in the disk-drive industry, reporting revenues of nine billion dollars. Last year, Seagate shipped its two-billionth disk drive. Most of the entrant firms celebrated by Christensen as triumphant disrupters, on the other hand, no longer exist, their success having been in some cases brief and in others illusory….. As striking as the disruption in the disk-drive industry seemed in the nineteen-eighties, more striking, from the vantage of history, are the continuities. Christensen argues that incumbents in the disk-drive industry were regularly destroyed by newcomers. But today, after much consolidation, the divisions that dominate the industry are divisions that led the market in the nineteen-eighties. (In some instances, what shifted was their ownership: I.B.M. sold its hard-disk division to Hitachi, which later sold its division to Western Digital.) In the longer term, victory in the disk-drive industry appears to have gone to the manufacturers that were good at incremental improvements, whether or not they were the first to market the disruptive new format. Companies that were quick to release a new product but not skilled at tinkering have tended to flame out.</blockquote>
 Lepore continues:
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 * [https://economics.mit.edu/files/1785#:~:text=run%20macroeconomic%20consequences.-,Creative%20destruction%20refers%20to%20the%20incessant%20product%20and%20process%20innovation,the%20essential%20fact%20about%20capitalism' MIT course work] on [[Creative Destruction]].
 * The thread of this wiki follows [https://dianeravitch.net/2015/03/11/jill-lepore-the-hoax-of-disruptive-innovation/ Dian Ravitch's blog] (2015-03-11).
-* [https://www.publicbooks.org/public-thinker-jill-lepore-on-the-challenge-of-explaining-things/ Interview with Jill Lapore] on creative destruction and publishing.
+* [https://www.publicbooks.org/public-thinker-jill-lepore-on-the-challenge-of-explaining-things/ Interview with Jill Lepore] on creative destruction and publishing.
 [[Category: Glossary]]
 [[Category: Article]]

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 ==Full Title or Meme==
-Static societies do not innovate. Chaotic societies do not survive. A measured approach to [[Creative Destruction]]<ref>Joseph Schumpeter ''Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy'' Routledge; (1942)
+Static societies do not innovate. Chaotic societies do not survive. A measured approach to [[Creative Destruction]]<ref name="schumpeter">Joseph Schumpeter ''Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy'' Routledge; (1942)
 ISBN 978-1138138612</ref> can build dynamic, growing societies.
 ==Context==
-Corporate reformers strongly preach Joseph Schumpeter and Christensen's theory<ref>Clayton M. Christensen, ''The Innovator’s Dilemma''. (1997-01-05) Harvard Business Review Press ISBN 978-1633691780</ref> of “creative destruction,” “innovation, and “disruption” as driving corporate history. These ideas justify their efforts to tear apart traditional public school systems, replace experienced teachers with inexperienced youngsters, close schools, and experiment with charters, vouchers, and anything else that will destroy the status quo. To be sure, some are in the school reform business to make money, but others see themselves as heroes of a movement that sees itself as blowing up “failing schools” and forcing fresh innovations into a stagnant sector of the economy.
+Corporate reformers strongly preach Joseph Schumpeter<ref name="schumpeter" /> and Clayton Christensen's theory<ref>Clayton M. Christensen, ''The Innovator’s Dilemma''. (1997-01-05) Harvard Business Review Press ISBN 978-1633691780</ref> of “creative destruction,” “innovation, and “disruption” as driving corporate history. These ideas justify their efforts to tear apart traditional public school systems, replace experienced teachers with inexperienced youngsters, close schools, and experiment with charters, vouchers, and anything else that will destroy the status quo. To be sure, some are in the school reform business to make money, but others see themselves as heroes of a movement that sees itself as blowing up “failing schools” and forcing fresh innovations into a stagnant sector of the economy.
 This author used Christensen's argument in a pitch to Bill Gates for his "think week".  Gates blasted the paper for sloppy thinking. His objections were not fully understood until a remarkable article by Jill Lepore, published by the New Yorker,  exploded the dogmas of “disruption” as progress. Do schools need to be disrupted by techniques borrowed from the business world? Do families need to be disrupted? Do communities need disruption? According to disruption theory, disruption is the precursor to success.

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 ==Context==
-Corporate reformers strongly preach Christensen's theory<ref>Clayton M. Christensen, ''The Innovator’s Dilemma''. (1997-01-05) Harvard Business Review Press ISBN 978-1633691780</ref> of “creative destruction,” “innovation, and “disruption” as driving corporate history. These ideas justify their efforts to tear apart traditional public school systems, replace experienced teachers with inexperienced youngsters, close schools, and experiment with charters, vouchers, and anything else that will destroy the status quo. To be sure, some are in the school reform business to make money, but others see themselves as heroes of a movement that sees itself as blowing up “failing schools” and forcing fresh innovations into a stagnant sector of the economy.
+Corporate reformers strongly preach Joseph Schumpeter and Christensen's theory<ref>Clayton M. Christensen, ''The Innovator’s Dilemma''. (1997-01-05) Harvard Business Review Press ISBN 978-1633691780</ref> of “creative destruction,” “innovation, and “disruption” as driving corporate history. These ideas justify their efforts to tear apart traditional public school systems, replace experienced teachers with inexperienced youngsters, close schools, and experiment with charters, vouchers, and anything else that will destroy the status quo. To be sure, some are in the school reform business to make money, but others see themselves as heroes of a movement that sees itself as blowing up “failing schools” and forcing fresh innovations into a stagnant sector of the economy.
 This author used Christensen's argument in a pitch to Bill Gates for his "think week".  Gates blasted the paper for sloppy thinking. His objections were not fully understood until a remarkable article by Jill Lepore, published by the New Yorker,  exploded the dogmas of “disruption” as progress. Do schools need to be disrupted by techniques borrowed from the business world? Do families need to be disrupted? Do communities need disruption? According to disruption theory, disruption is the precursor to success.

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 Lepore continues:
 <blockquote>Disruptive innovation as an explanation for how change happens is everywhere. Ideas that come from business schools are exceptionally well marketed. Faith in disruption is the best illustration, and the worst case, of a larger historical transformation having to do with secularization, and what happens when the invisible hand replaces the hand of God as explanation and justification. Innovation and disruption are ideas that originated in the arena of business but which have since been applied to arenas whose values and goals are remote from the values and goals of business. People aren’t disk drives. Public schools, colleges and universities, churches, museums, and many hospitals, all of which have been subjected to disruptive innovation, have revenues and expenses and infrastructures, but they aren’t industries in the same way that manufacturers of hard-disk drives or truck engines or drygoods are industries. Journalism isn’t an industry in that sense, either.</blockquote>
-Note that the hard disk drive was still manufactured by Seagate (after several more mergers) in 2025 even though disruptions continue and solid state drives are offered for many of the markets that were dominated by the HDD when the article was written.
+Note that the hard disk drive was still manufactured by Seagate (after several more mergers) in 2025 even though disruptions continue and solid state drives (SSD) are offered for many of the markets that were dominated by the HDD when the article was written.
 <blockquote>Doctors have obligations to their patients, teachers to their students, pastors to their congregations, curators to the public, and journalists to their readers—obligations that lie outside the realm of earnings, and are fundamentally different from the obligations that a business executive has to employees, partners, and investors. Historically, institutions like museums, hospitals, schools, and universities have been supported by patronage, donations made by individuals or funding from church or state. The press has generally supported itself by charging subscribers and selling advertising. (Underwriting by corporations and foundations is a funding source of more recent vintage.) Charging for admission, membership, subscriptions and, for some, earning profits are similarities these institutions have with businesses. Still, that doesn’t make them industries, which turn things into commodities and sell them for gain.</blockquote>

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 Corporate reformers strongly preach Christensen's theory<ref>Clayton M. Christensen, ''The Innovator’s Dilemma''. (1997-01-05) Harvard Business Review Press ISBN 978-1633691780</ref> of “creative destruction,” “innovation, and “disruption” as driving corporate history. These ideas justify their efforts to tear apart traditional public school systems, replace experienced teachers with inexperienced youngsters, close schools, and experiment with charters, vouchers, and anything else that will destroy the status quo. To be sure, some are in the school reform business to make money, but others see themselves as heroes of a movement that sees itself as blowing up “failing schools” and forcing fresh innovations into a stagnant sector of the economy.
-This author used Christensen's argument in a pitch to Bill Gates for his "think week".  He blasted the paper for sloppy thinking. His objections were not fully understood until a remarkable article by Jill Lepore, published by the New Yorker,  exploded the dogmas of “disruption” as progress. Do schools need to be disrupted by techniques borrowed from the business world? Do families need to be disrupted? Do communities need disruption? According to disruption theory, disruption is the precursor to success.
+This author used Christensen's argument in a pitch to Bill Gates for his "think week".  Gates blasted the paper for sloppy thinking. His objections were not fully understood until a remarkable article by Jill Lepore, published by the New Yorker,  exploded the dogmas of “disruption” as progress. Do schools need to be disrupted by techniques borrowed from the business world? Do families need to be disrupted? Do communities need disruption? According to disruption theory, disruption is the precursor to success.
 ==Lepore disrupts Christensen==

← Older revision		Revision as of 01:36, 8 April 2025
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	==Others on Disruption==		==Others on Disruption==
		+	<blockquote>When Alexander Graham Bell introduced his telephone in March 1876, the invention was riddled with problems. The line was a crackly mess—prone to interference from nearby electrical lines—and it was powered by a battery that leaked acid. Still, it allowed for a remarkable, unmooring experience: For the first time, you could talk in real time to someone blocks or miles away. “It was like a voice from another world,” marveled one early user. Bell quickly improved the quality, and customers thronged. In the first year, over 3,000 telephones sold; by 1900 there were over one million phones nationwide.

		+	At first, the telephone was marketed mainly as a tool for business. Physicians and drugstores bought them to process orders, and business owners installed them at home so they could be quickly reached. The phone, proclaimed early ad copy, gave business leaders an ESP-like “sixth sense” of their far-flung operations.
		+
		+	The idea of using such a powerful tool for everyday conversation? That seemed laughable and obnoxious. One early social critic warned that the phone should not be used for the “exchange of twaddle between foolish women.” Businessmen prohibited their wives from tying up the line, lest they interfere with commerce. “At the beginning, women were forbidden to use the phone—the business was supposed to have the priority,” notes Michéle Martin, a professor emeritus at Canada’s Carleton University and author of Hello, Central?
		+
		+	But it quickly became apparent that people wanted to talk—to socialize. One phone company manager in 1909 did a survey of usage and found that 30 percent of all calls were “idle gossip,” lasting 7.5 minutes on average each. He didn’t like this chitchat, but he was running against the stream. Eventually phone firms realized there was more money in selling lines for banter than for business. “They realized, ‘We can make money off gossip and idle conversation and sociability on the telephone,’” says Claude Fischer, author of America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940.</blockquote>
	Clive Thompson ''Texting Isn’t the First New Technology Thought to Impair Social Skills When Alexander Graham Bell introduced the telephone, skeptics worried about how it might affect people’s interactions'' Smithsonian Magazine 2016-03 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/texting-isnt-first-new-technology-thought-impair-social-skills-180958091/		Clive Thompson ''Texting Isn’t the First New Technology Thought to Impair Social Skills When Alexander Graham Bell introduced the telephone, skeptics worried about how it might affect people’s interactions'' Smithsonian Magazine 2016-03 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/texting-isnt-first-new-technology-thought-impair-social-skills-180958091/

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 This author used Christensen's argument in a pitch to Bill Gates for his "think week".  He blasted the paper for sloppy thinking. His objections were not fully understood until a remarkable article by Jill Lepore, published by the New Yorker,  exploded the dogmas of “disruption” as progress. Do schools need to be disrupted by techniques borrowed from the business world? Do families need to be disrupted? Do communities need disruption? According to disruption theory, disruption is the precursor to success.
-==Lapore disrupts Christensen==
+==Lepore disrupts Christensen==
 Lepore was at Harvard with the business professor Clayton Christensen. He popularized the idea that big companies die as they are overtaken by nimble start-ups that embrace innovation. Business leaders took heed and committed themselves to persistent re-invention and self-disruption, or buying up the start-ups before they overtook the established industry leader.