Disruption Final

BY JEFF GOLDSMITH If you read the business press, as I do every day, It is impossible to escape the “disruption” meme.  Clayton Christiansen’s  1997 Innovators Dilemma explored how established businesses are blindsided by lower-cost competitors that undermine their core products, and eventually destroy their businesses.   Classic examples were the displacement of film-based cameras by digital cameras and, now, cell phones, the destruction of retail shopping by Amazon and video rental outlets by streaming video services. A Civic Religion Perhaps because Christiansen’s analysis arrived at the peak of the first Internet boom, it generated a high level of anxiety in the corporate world.     It did not seem to matter that Christiansen’s original analysis was riddled with flaws, meticulously detailed in Harvard colleague Jill Lepore’s takedown in the New Yorker in 2014. By then, the disruption thesis had become a cornerstone of a kind of civic religion, an article of faith and an indispensable staple of fundraising pitches both on the buy and sides of venture and private equity businesses.   No one seemed to be asking how great trade for the society was, say,  tiny Craigslist taking down the newspaper business by drying up its classified ad revenues.    Disrupting a $4.1 Trillion Health System I believe that twenty-five years on,  the notion of disruptive innovation has reached its “sell-by” date,    At least in healthcare, the fiel...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Health Tech Health Technology health innovation Jeff Goldsmith Source Type: blogs