// 33
BANNED WORDS
DISRUPTIVE
Truly disruptive technologies or business models are an amazing thing. Steam
engines, assembly lines, the internet: these things changed the world.
But we oen confuse things that are innovative with things that are disruptive.
Disruption is groundbreaking; it knocks tradition back on its heels. Innovation
uses new methods or new ideas. Innovation is extraordinarily important, and it
can be disruptive, but it isn’t necessarily the same thing.
Truly disruptive technologies or models oen fail before they succeed.
In this Forbes article, Clayton Christensen, the Harvard Business School
professor (and founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive
Innovation), says that,
“a disruption displaces an existing market, industry,
or technology and produces something new and
more efficient and worthwhile. It is at once
destructive and creative.”
In our world of fashion tech, there are real disruptions happening: the rise of
recommerce, the adoption of non-currency and non-ownership ideas, the mass
embracing of wearable tech. Let’s not undermine these disruptions by throwing
the word around.
e next time you’re describing something amazing ask yourself: is this
innovative, or is this truly disruptive?