Mid-month, April 2026

Behavioral New World

Mid-month, April 2026

I continue with a series of short pieces on topics I’ve been thinking about.

Essay 8: Disruptive innovation is not new

Clayton Christiansen made famous the concept of “disruptive innovation.” A June 15, 2017, article in The Economist magazine says, “THE [sic] most influential business idea of recent years is Clayton Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation.”

I have no objection to the concept as a descriptive tool. It does seem to provide a description of business evolution. In fact, it seems to me that all innovation has some degree of disruption associated with it. As such, I think there’s a bit of Captain Obvious about the concept. However, it seems less valuable as a predictive theory.

And the idea is not new. In 1942, Joseph Schumpeter, in his book Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, coined the phrase “creative destruction” to describe innovation and its effect on the business cycle. Arguably, the idea was not new even then—a similar concept was advanced by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848 in their book The Communist Manifesto.

Others have had the same idea. For example, Alan Greenspan says, “Destruction is more than just an unfortunate side effect of creation. It is part and parcel of the same thing.” (Greenspan and Wooldridge, pp. 420-21)

Attempts to test the theory as a predictive model have had mixed results. Jill Lepore has written a critical review that looks at specific predictions made by Christiansen.[1] One of the challenges in such an investigation is that the predictions of the disruptive innovation are not precise, leaving a type of Rorschach test for evaluators of the concept.

And, as one would expect in the marketplace of ideas, disruptive innovation has its defenders.[2] I leave it to the interested reader to pursue the debate.

The case of disruptive innovation suggests that “new” ideas are not always new. That’s not necessarily negative: there might be value in reviving past ideas and applying them to the present situation. For example, disruptive innovation (Christiansen) is focused more on individual firms than the economic cycle (Schumpeter).

More broadly: influential ideas rarely occur in a vacuum. One is reminded of Isaac Newton’s comment, “”If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” For those of you trying to hatch The Next Big Idea, don’t think that it needs to be completely original. Don’t hesitate to draw upon the wisdom of past thinkers. But intellectual humility requires you to acknowledge the antecedents of your ideas.

Reference

Greenspan, Alan and Wooldridge, Adrian, Capitalism in America: A History, Random House, 2018.

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/06/23/the-disruption-machine

[2] https://deloitte.wsj.com/cio/in-defense-of-the-theory-of-disruptive-innovation-1409630543