Disruption is such an overused buzzword. But the word itself does have meaning: As defined by the Oxford and Merriam-Webster dictionaries, it is a “disturbance…that interrupts an event, activity, or process” and that causes something “to be unable to continue in the normal way”. It’s also the name for an influential theory about innovation first coined by Clayton Christensen in a 1995 article and later publicized through his 1997 book, The Innovator’s Dilemma.

But that was nearly two decades ago! Not only has the concept been much misunderstood and mangled since then, surely it’s changed given the advent of new tech and business models today? Is it still relevant, given cases that seemingly defy the theory and its application? Are we at risk of overfitting this “verbally inflated” term to everything, and in doing so, are we missing what disruption theory really says — and doesn’t?

Michael Raynor, co-author of the followup book on disruptive innovation with Christensen — and author of another book that later tested the predictive power of the theory — joins this episode of the a16z Podcast to answer these questions and more. He also hints at some nuggets from an upcoming article in Harvard Business Review with Christensen and others that addresses the latest formulations of this theory of innovation.

“In my first post on what makes a character likable, I laid out Eric Edson’s criteria from The Story Solution: Courage; Unfair Injury; Skill; Funny; Just Plain Nice; In Danger; Loved By Friends And Family; Hard Working; Obsessed. To be likable, a character only needs a majority – 5 out of 9 traits.”

“it seems to me that many people now talk about educational performance by students as simply and uncomplicatedly a product of school and teacher inputs. There’s a certain degree of variation between students in their academic performance, whether you’re looking at standardized testing or grades or whatever. What portion of that variation is controlled by teachers and schools is, I would argue, tremendously difficult to ascertain empirically, given the massive number of confounding variables and noise to deal with. But more and more, I see an attitude reflected in our popular discussion of education that presumes that teachers and schools control essentially all of that variation.”

This study offers evidence that inequality leads to political polarization. Though they have yet to produce definitive findings, the researchers also believe, as many others in their field do, that political polarization also in turn produces more inequality, creating a vicious feedback loop of inequality and polarized politics.

“What we see from studies of children and studies of small-scale societies is an early-emerging desire for fairness, and a particularly strong motivation not to get less than anyone else. But we don’t find a smidgen of evidence that humans or any other species naturally value equality for its sake.”