Disrupting Disruption

Disruption Theory is one of those ideas that’s obviously useful, incredibly popular, and likely quite incomplete.

It’s useful because history has repeated the pattern over and over again: powerful incumbents face an existential dilemma when faced with a certain type of new entrant.

But the theory also feels — at least to me, Alex Danco, Ben Thompson, and Hamilton Helmer — like it’s not the whole story. Of course, no theory can predict everything. But at this point the list of exceptions seems to be getting rather long.