Disrupting “Disruption” Rhetoric

Starting something with the goal of disrupting an existing industry is like becoming an actor or singer with the goal of making it to the Top 10 charts: both types of efforts are doomed to fail because they focus on the wrong thing.

The right thing to focus on would be to try to do the best job possible. A musician who tries to create the best music possible and to connect with his/her fans at the deepest level possible is much more likely to actually become famous. In other words, things like "disruption" and "becoming famous" are best treated as byproducts, rather than the main goal.

I'm just tired of hearing the word "disrupt". It just feels so juvenile and faux-edgy to me. Just provide be innovative and provide something that improves people's lives.

Christensen did good descriptive work in his early books. Disruption was a thing. He tagged it, studied it, and described it. All that was very helpful. I actually am sympathetic to his later prescriptive works, I think they are seeking to solve social problems through disruptive change. I think what's happening in this essay though is that Pasquale sees the effect bound to the prescriptions, or even some alliance of pundits. That's just not the case. We can argue suggestions, but disruption will keep happening where we don't expect it ... because it is a thing.

Meh... I don't think the problem is focusing on "disruption", and I don't see that making any attempt to defocus "disrupting" existing power structures is any sort of improvement. The problem is, it's fucking hard to actually "disrupt" big, powerful, entrenched structures and institutions! Disrupting health-care, for example, isn't as simple as, for example, setting up an EMR site and enabling the ability for people to seamlessly and transparently share their medical records across providers, etc., etc. You can build all the Electronic Medical Records tech you want, but that shit is highly regulated, and their are large, powerful companies with dominant positions in health-insurance, and health-care providers who have to be onboard for things to become widely adopted.

And, of course, there's not much competition in the health-care field, largely due to... wait for it... government regulations.

I posit that our focus should be on making the changes in our society that would actually allow disruption to occur.

Why does disruption(1) seem not to work in healtcare:

1. Disruption means offering something with less quality(but good enough). People are less willing to make those compromises in health care.

2. Industry players(big businesses, doctors, nurses) have huge amount of political power, partly because of 1, In an highly regulated industry - this means disruptors aren't allowed.

3.insurance makes people disregard the costs of treatment, again stopping disruptors.

If I remember correctly,Clayton Christensen is aware of those issues, and his first silution(before democrats came to power) was health vouchers.

I think he believed they will enter price competition into the market, hopefully people will be willing to use disruptive innovations, and maybe with the potential new money, disruptors will succeed in lobbying and changing the rules.

That is one solution.

Anyway, if anybody want to lower the costs of medicine, those issues are need to be dealt with. The author just uses a lot of big words, and says nothing but blaming vague power structures. Not a very useful article.

Given that the author of this article is "Schering-Plough Professor in Health Care Regulation and Enforcement", it should be obvious why disruption rhetoric may appear threatening to him.