The Problem, Really, is This Thing Called 'Disruption' (wired.com)

New submitter mirandakatz writes: The word "disruption" is everywhere in tech -- and it's getting founders in trouble. Just look at what happened with Bodega last week: Had the startup not professed to be disrupting the mom-and-pop shops on every corner, it might not have landed itself in such hot water. At Backchannel, veteran Silicon Valley communications whiz Karen Wickre makes the case against "disruption," pointing out that many of today's biggest companies got their starts without claiming to completely upend an existing industry. She writes: "What if Sergey and Larry had touted Google, in 1998, as 'an unprecedented platform for disrupting global advertising?' Do you think Jeff Bezos claimed that Amazon.com was upending global retail? Netflix? Within a few months of its 1997 launch, it did not foresee the actual paradigm shift of media streaming."

Comments

Well, duh

[bhcompy]

"I'm going to put a bunch of people out of business and create a new way to do business in this vertical" is not a way to endear yourself to people in this day and age. Walmart, Amazon, Google, etc didn't get to where they are by telling people they're going to rape and pillage entire industries. They got their by hiding that fact until their momentum couldn't be stopped.

Re:Well, duh

[bobbutts]

I find the advantage of Amazon to be convenience and selection. Price is a secondary concern. I want it now, but driving for 15 mins each way and messing around in a store doesn't qualify as "now".

Re:Well, duh

[Anonymous Coward]

instant gratification in a brick and mortar store does not include the fact that they don't carry my size in clothes or enough of a selection of the items that I am looking for. For example, I cannot get the programming books that I am looking for in a Barnes and Noble. They cannot keep up with the changes in the industry.

Re:Well, duh

[Wycliffe]

I think he was talking about how Amazon got its start... online books. Amazon used to be just an online book store that had cheaper prices and cheap shipping if you didn't mind waiting a week to 10 days because they negotiated lower prices in exchange for lower quality shipping. Talk about taking a niche market and using it to build out...

But even at the beginning, price wasn't the only factor. The other factor was selection. Amazon was cheaper than the local bookstore but you also didn't have to drive there only to find out that the specific book you wanted wasn't there. Amazon has always been about the "long tail". Brick and mortar cannot compete with the long tail of online sales. Walmart realizes this too which is why they have practically become a seasonal store and now start clearancing swimsuits in July. They know that the even though July/August are prime swimming months, the majority of swimsuit sales are already done by then so they need to move out the swimsuits and start moving in something else with high volume. Walmart has decided that it is better to sell a bunch of stuff in bulk during peak season than it is to try to compete with the long tail.

Re:No, the problem is people are stupid

[bluefoxlucid]

They try to find where the gaps exist and exploit them without thinking of what that does to everyone involved.

At the Black Caucus Town Hall meeting last night, one of our delegates talked about criminal justice reform. They were proud of having passed new laws that assigned bail based on things like flight risk and the danger a person posed to a community, reducing the amount of mass-incarceration.

They were also quite proud of having worked out the legal language such that they'd prevented a complete collapse of the bail bondsman industry. In other words: they made sure to put black people under enough financial duress to keep the bondsmen (enormous cash holders) in business using poor black peoples's money.

So, to recap: even though we think you're not a danger and not a flight risk, we're still going to make sure to transfer some of your money to that rich guy's pocket so he can continue getting rich off poor people and be happier.

They also quoted statistics that some 70% of these people weren't convicted of anything and got released, which is why it's so imperative we don't bond them on ludicrously-high bail and keep them locked up for 2 months awaiting trial. We have laws to automatically expunge their records because of this.

By the by, the reason everything you buy is available and affordable is we've spent a lot of time reducing the number of jobs involved in making anything. The first part of price--the major, immutable part--is wages, and in a more-fundamental sense, labor. We can't create time; we have to do more with the same human labor time, or w can't physically possess more, much less afford to buy it. In the end, we're trading time. So "at the expense of the many"? That "expense" is that the many have a greater standard-of-living--it's the difference between the US and a poor third-world country like Chile.

Real disruption is done secretly

[gurps_npc]

That's how Netflix took down Blockbuster. They kept their huge profits secret till they went public. By that time it was too late for Blockbuster video rental store (Yes, they really did have a store that rented movies.)

Now, everyone tries to brag in order to get money. It's self defeating. If you are truly a disruptive technology, you should be working your ass to keep that secret. Claim you expect to get 20% of the market, not 80%.