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Clayton Christensen

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2015-10-24
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2015-10-24
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  1. “Wait, we'll read it. But what's the One is that I think disruption has come to be used in a way that people say they are not using in a technical sense and they do not mean to invoke Clay Christensen. But indeed, if you use disruption to mean something has revolutionized and improved outcomes, then that's what you're doing, right? Because the English word means to introduce chaos, not to introduce a new and better order. So when we use disruption with an innovation connotation attached to it, then disruption theory comes along for the ride. And the bad news is that when that happens, we're back to the verbal inflation problem. We actually lose the power that disruption theory has to offer. And that's what concerns me, right? So my hope is to kind of that December piece in part will be... Begin to save disruption from its own popularity.”

    2015-10-24 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “But in 97 is a long time ago. And the first article that introduced it to a popular management article was in the Harvard Business Review in 1995. So it was actually 20 years since disruption theory was kind of introduced. It's not like it's been frozen in amber for that 20-year period. And so it's important to remember that. Some of what's happened is that people have picked up the innovator's dilemma and read that very carefully and said, okay, I'm going to go after this, which is, again, that's how we learn. That's how science progresses, absolutely. But it makes a lot more sense to grab a hold of the latest formulation of the theory that takes advantage of everything that's been learned over the last 20 years.”

    2015-10-24 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “I can see why they tease you about that. I know Innovator's dilemma was the first popular expression of disruption theory. It wasn't the first, in fact, Clay's theory of disruption was really born in his doctoral thesis.”

    2015-10-24 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “No, of course, which is why I'm thinking of Amazon. No, no, no question, which is why it's called the three rules, not the three laws. And here's what we think the rules are good for, which is that Some folks may be of a mind that look, you can collect the data, analyze the data, and come up with the answer. The data are always ambiguous, right? What data mean is as much a function of what we impose on them and what they say to us. And so if you can't be biased free, because you can't, the best you can hope for perhaps is to have the right bias, right? Play house odds, if you will. So when we look at it, we say, look, the bias should be better before cheaper and revenue before cost. If the data convince you otherwise, then you should go in the other direction. We're not going to say, well, I'm just going to ignore reality and follow the rule. That would be silly.”

    2015-10-24 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Yeah, I mean, just one last point on this. I think this is where the studies do get a little tricky because we're looking at larger data sets, but every success story, and I admit that there is definitely survivor bias when I make this claim I'm about to make, there's an outlier success that always disproves every theory. No, of course. No, no, no question.”

    2015-10-24 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “That's great, which is why the third rule is there are no others. So those are rules that I think they passed the test of being falsifiable. If I'd said the rules were cheaper before better, I wouldn't be talking nonsense. There are people who actually think price-based competition is extraordinarily powerful. Look at the big discounters in any industry. What we found is the data pointing the other direction. If I'd told you that being a cost leader is key to superior profitability, you'd probably think, yeah, that makes sense. And it does make sense. It just happens not to be true, which is that systematically, over the long term, companies that focus on superior revenue either through higher unit price or higher total unit volume deliver superior are more likely to deliver superior profitability than companies that focus on cost leadership.”

    2015-10-24 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “And we've concluded that companies that deliver exceptional profitability over time focus systematically on better before cheaper. The second question is how do you capture value for yourself in the form of profits? And here are the arithmetic of profitability is pretty straightforward, right? It's just revenue minus cost. Guess what? Companies that deliver superior profitability focus on revenue before cost. And then finally, what do you change when everything around you changes? And the answer is anything except those first two rules.”

    2015-10-24 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Better before cheaper, revenue before cost, and there are no other rules, if you'll forgive me. That's great. And it's intended to look at kind of the three core questions that I think define any business. In the first instance, how do you create value for your customers? And there's basically two ways you can do that, right? You can provide superior value or you can provide lower price.”

    2015-10-24 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Yeah, so that I would put in a category of a strategy problem, right? How do you actually create a strategy, how do you embrace different trade-offs in a different way from your competition so that you are differentiated in a way that customers find valuable? The good news is that there, once again, there's a long stream of both scholarship, theoretical, and applied that seeks to tackle that problem. I've tried to make my own contribution to that body of work as well. In 2013, my book, The Three Rules came out with my co-author, Mumtaz Ahmed, and that was an attempt to try and unpack what does it take to win in the here and now when you face trade-offs, which tradeoffs should you embrace and how do you go about remaining committed to those choices over time?”

    2015-10-24 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Ably following the disruptive path, and guess what? Not all of them succeeded. Some did, some didn't. Back to my earlier observation, they have to win the cross-sectional battle as well as the longitudinal one. And disruption theory doesn't say anything about that. That's not a shortcoming of the theory. That's not, as they say around here, that's not a bug that's a feature, right? Because it's not a theory of theories are powerful when they have boundaries, when you know what phenomenon they are used to describe. It's like an antibiotic. Take antibiotics when you got a cold, you're actually doing yourself a harm”

    2015-10-24 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Yes. So if disruption were defined as being successful, it would be useless as a theory. And so there are any number of efforts that have tried to follow disruptive paths that have ultimately failed. We'll go back to the core research that led Clay to create or discover the theory depending on how you think about these things in disk drives. So each subsequent generation of disk drives, you start out with the Winchester drives and then the Adiance drives and then the five and a quarter and then the three and a half. And with each generation of disk drives, there was a ravenous horde of companies that were seeking to deliver that new generation of technology, all eager and in fact quite”

    2015-10-24 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “So, another thing that people tend to equate when it comes to disruption, and this actually comes up in the case of the iPhone that we were just talking about, is that disruption equals money. Clearly not all wildly successful products are disruptive. Is that true the other way around?”

    2015-10-24 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “And then they followed a disruptive path into commercial applications for photocopying technology. And by the way, you need a different toolkit to understand how to win that cross-sectional battle. That's a strategy problem, right? Strategies about the constraints you embrace. The innovation problem is about the constraints you break. And you need a different toolkit to understand that. And I think a very powerful tool in that toolkit is disruption theory. And there are other tools, diffusion theory, crossing the chasm. There are others.”

    2015-10-24 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Near and dear to your heart, I know. So the early personal copiers, they had a cross-sectional battle to win themselves. They were competing with carbon, paper and Gestetner machines. So they were more expensive than those. They had to be better, right? They had to win the cross-sectional strategic battle for the niche market that they wanted. Now, it was niche to Xerox, but it wasn't a niche market to the folks who made carbon paper and gas cedar machines. So the personal copiers had to win that fight.”

    2015-10-24 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “As well as Games, as well as so we'll go back sometimes with the benefit of the perspective that history provides. But I'm not reinterpreting. If you look at, say, Xerox and personal copiers, we talked about this.”

    2015-10-24 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “But that's the longitudinal problem The cross sectional problem is how did they enter the smartphone market? They entered it with a sustaining innovation and it worked. Good for them. Now, how did they realize growth out of that? Well, they were busy racing up the disruptive trajectory, displacing the personal computer. Terrific. Every company is playing both games at the same time. They have to be winning the cross-sectional battle they're in.”

    2015-10-24 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “That established phone makers. I don't know if Apple can have them. We don't really want those customers anyway. Who needs 80 million more customers? Of course, right? So they were selling to customers, and Play, I think, was absolutely correct in the way in which he applied the theory. He said, look, the data say pretty clearly that if you kind of walk into a bar and punch the biggest guy there, you're in for a fight. And chances are you're going to lose. That's not what happened, right? So Apple, my view, beat the odds in the way that if Tesla is ultimately successful, Tesla will have beaten the odds. And that's fine, right? That is a class of phenomenon that needs a theory to explain it. How is it that some companies enter well-established markets and prevail when that's such a long odds proposition?”

    2015-10-24 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “So I think, and this is a subtle but critically important distinction to make between what I'll call the cross-sectional problem and the longitudinal problem. So Apple showed up with the iPhone in the mobile phone market with a better mousetrap. It did Apple did not enter the smartphone market disruptively. And again, why do we say that? Let's see. Whom were they trying to sell the iPhone to? People who had phones, right? People who wanted a better phone. People who want to film that could do other stuff. It's not as though they were appealing to a niche market that”

    2015-10-24 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Got it. So let's actually then take on the elephant in the room and talk about, and again, I don't want to make this about clay. I know we both have immense respect for him, but people often argue that he was wrong about the iPhone. And I mean, I've made the argument, I know others have made this argument that it was a category error. That he just got the category wrong for what he actually thought it should be when it was something else. What's your sort of take on sort of why that did actually apply or didn't apply in that case?”

    2015-10-24 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “And so all of these other characteristics, when people say, well, it started small and got big and it revolutionized the industry, therefore it's disruptive. Wholly non sequiturs, Batman, none of those things have anything to do with whether or not you're following a disruptive path. Disruption can be used very precisely and it describes an important class of phenomenon, but it's not a theory of everything.”

    2015-10-24 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “And this is important because if it's there already, if it's already more than good enough, right for those applications, then what we have is not bona fide disruption. What we have is a marketing strategy. The need, the need to start at the fringe and move to the middle. And so the kinds of things that get caught up is people say, well, it started small and got big. Well, that doesn't make you disruptive. That just means you started small and got big. Almost nothing big starts big”

    2015-10-24 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “They're having difficulty, I think, finding adoption in mainstream hospital labs, and so they're actually finding their foothold, their first commercial applications in clinics and drugstores. Essentially, if you will, on the fringes of the core mainstream blood testing market. So you have something that has broken certain constraints and is following a path from the fringe to the mainstream. What I don't know enough about is whether there's at that core the enabling technology that is going to allow the Theranos solution to in scare quotes here improve to the point that it can penetrate mainstream markets.”

    2015-10-24 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Everywhere And when I just confess. I actually did credit you in doing this, but I'm going to. Innovation I've ever heard. I really mean that. We can stop here. So an innovation is anything that breaks a constraint. And disruptive innovation is a particular path, right?”

    2015-10-24 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “I love that definition, by the way. I've actually stolen and used that definition for years since reading your book everywhere. Just want to tell people that publicly that that wasn't my idea. I want to just confess after all these years. I actually did credit you in doing this, but I am going to say that that is, I think, by far one of the best definitions of innovation I've ever heard. Well, thank you. I really mean that. We can stop here. So an innovation.”

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  25. “So I would look at that one. And here I probably run out of facts sooner than I should. My understanding there is that they've created a whole series of blood tests that are able to give a high level of accuracy at very low expense and very low inconvenience, right? The way I think about that is that it's an innovation because it has broken trade-offs. And this is something that I actually think gets in the way is that when we think about disruptive innovation, we can't separate disruptive innovation from any other type of innovation because we don't have the larger class defined. So, an innovation for me is anything that breaks your constraint.”

    2015-10-24 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “So far, we have Uber and Tesla, which a lot of people, including me apparently, thought were disruptive and really aren't. So are there any examples where the company is actually disruptive if no one really knows it is?”

    2015-10-24 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “She was hinged on. Yeah, so you find those really demanding early adopters, you solve their problem because they're demanding, they're willing to pay, you use the profits that you generate from serving those high demand, very profitable early adopter customers. And then there's a lot of things you have to do in order to cross the chasm into the mainstream. That's completely different from what disruption describes. Disruption describes a very different path from the fringe to the mainstream.”

    2015-10-24 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “So Tesla goes after a critically important segment of the market and shows up with its own version of a better mousetrap and appeals to those they're willing to buy and the way we go. And so, in fact, if I were to point to somebody that explains the path that Tesla appears to be following, I'd point to Jeff Moore and crossing the chasm. As I read it, the way you cross the chasm is that you find very demanding customers and you create a highly effective solution that solves their problems really well. And then basically you ride a cost reduction curve into the mainstream. So you find the really demanding early adopters. In a sense, it's an adaptation of Everett Rogers diffusion theory. That's actually where the whole process.”

    2015-10-24 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “Absolutely. And that's the sustaining innovation. Disruptive innovations target overserved customers, customers for which established solutions are too good, too expensive. So that's another precision.”

    2015-10-24 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “Again, this is different because, yes, you're right. They would have bought another car. They would have been, they are the typical segment for other car companies. So that's not a new mark in that sense. But they weren't having, their needs were not being met.”

    2015-10-24 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “Well, same reasons, right? Was Tesla targeting a small, unprofitable, unattractive segment of the car market that was in no interest to incumbent car companies? No, they're targeting people willing to spend a hundred grand on a car, which is very interesting and important to companies like Mercedes and BMW and Lexis and Dan, Dan, Dan, Dan.”

    2015-10-24 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “Absolutely. These are, you know, to use a medical analogy, these are different conditions, and you need to get the diagnosis right. So that's fine. The other thing that I think leads people astray is the notion of, and you hear this, you know, kind of top-down disruption. And people will point at Tesla. And they'll say, Tesla is a disruptor. They're disrupting the car industry, but they're doing it from the top”

    2015-10-24 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “So I guess there's a couple things that I've observed that people that have that threatened to lead folks astray. One is sort of it happened fast. You know, it's a big bang disruption. Well, no, we actually don't need that because we have this concept of the enabling technology and it's the rate of improvement in the enabling technology that determines whether or not it's a disruption. Now there may be complete transformations of an industry that happen very quickly for reasons other than the disruptive entry of startups. And that's fine. But then we need to be clear that's a different phenomenon.”

    2015-10-24 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “So then, how has the theory changed? You were already talking about what disruption theory isn't. Are there any other examples along those lines? And then I'd love to hear your thoughts about. What has sort of updated neurometer?”

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  35. “Of those things have to be there, and it's important to understand that because it feeds into the choices that you make as a manager along the way. How do you deploy resources? What R&D strategy do you follow? What customer segments do you partner? Build self-driving cars or not. These are all things. It's important, I think, to underline that I'm not sort of being picked, at least I hope I'm not being picked. No, it's great. This is why we want to have this discussion. The phenomenon you describe that one is describing and the meanings that one attributes to these words are critically important because they determine the choices we make.”

    2015-10-24 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “Well, no, it's a different phenomenon. And when I say adapted for the, we kind of touched on that earlier. Right. If we are describing a phenomenon in which software is the enabling technology for an entrant on a disruptive path, we're describing something that starts over on the fringes and works its way into the mainstream with a fundamentally different business model that is powered by, and this is key, fundamental improvements in the software over time.”

    2015-10-24 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “Let alone to appreciate the software, to evaluate that software, and actually say, okay, this is what's going to help us with the problem we have, nor were they incented to solve for that problem. And so he argued that instead of trying to go down that path, there's been a new wave of startups that's actually been able to quote disrupt. And yes, I agree, this is not in the technical form of disrupt, but now I'm using it as more of a descriptive adjective, that they were able to overturn and shake up, so to speak, the taxi industry because they built something full stack, like from end to end so they can control the entire experience. And by doing so, they essentially stop trying to sell their software to the taxi industry and just build an alternative, like to your point, a better mousetrap.”

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  38. “about regretting having called it disruptive. Oh, right. Your play is probably the one who has a lot of regrets around those things. But the way Chris Dixon articulates the thesis is that in the past, companies like Lyft and Uber would have tried to build software and then sell it to the taxi industry. But there weren't even people in the industry who could even have the skill set.”

    2015-10-24 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “Because if we think it's disruptive, then other folks who want to pursue a disruptive strategy will think, well, I need to do what Uber did. What did Uber do? Uber did something that, to my mind at least, is a fairly long odds proposition, which is they just built a better mousetrap.”

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  40. “And so remember, what disruption describes is a pathway, a particular way in which a small under-resourced entrant can succeed against well-managed dominant incumbents. So it's a pathway. It's not a description of your impact on the established market, which is how people have tended to use it. They say, oh, it's disruptive because it's turned the industry upside. Well, it has revolutionized the industry. It has had a huge impact on the industry. It has not. It's not technically.”

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  41. “Customer going after and continue for a large part of the business to go after folks who want a cheaper, more convenient, cleaner, nicer cab ride, right? It was an article in Business Week. Again, I think I'm remembering this largely correctly. And it was stating that Uber had gone from, again, close enough, close enough, 350,000 rides a month in Manhattan to 3 million rides a month in Manhattan. And over that same period of time, what do you think the drop-off in yellow cab rides was? Son of a gun, about three million rides a month. Right. So”

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  42. “Well, let's review the theory, right? I mean, disruption theory is first and foremost a theory of customer dependence. Whom are you selling to? So whom did Uber sell to? Was it selling to a niche of the market, the low end of the taxi market that the established taxis simply couldn't be bothered to serve? Was it selling to people who found hailing a cab and paying for it so inconvenient and so expensive that they just had never used cabs before? No.”

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  43. “That's And I'll give you an example. And I've asked this question at various conferences and workshops I've been part of for show of hands. They say, how many people think Uber is disruptive? Every hand in the room goes up. Ours included one of ours whenever. Exactly. And it's not. In fact, it's... It's a why.”

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  44. “That's a great question. In fact, those Clayton and I and another professor at HBS named Rory McDonald have a piece coming out in the December issue of the Harvard Business Review that tackle is exactly that.”

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  45. “We do have a tendency, you know. I think the predictive power matters because there are entire businesses built upon this theory. And some of them, which have become incredibly successful, one question we have is there's a tendency to kind of equate technology means disruption, just sort of, you know, to overapply and overfit the phrase to everything. So what Is disruption theory not like what's not disruption theory then to help people kind of understand what it is?”

    2015-10-24 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “Inside a company, all kinds of delimitations, my experiment, like every other, has its share of imperfections. But to your point, it was an attempt to actually try and take seriously the notion that the theory can be used to predict. And I found the findings encouraging.”

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  47. “That said, it's in absolute terms, we have to be modest, right? Their success rate was around 10% at picking winners, and it was about 15% at picking winners with disruption theory, because it's a big, noisy world.”

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  48. “Right, exactly. Yeah, although the executives weren't too thrilled to hear that they weren't doing any better than the NBA's, but. You know, sometimes the truth hurts. And we did that using a portfolio of businesses that had been launched by Intel over the years. And it was a randomized double-blind study to say, right, we went to the MBAs and gave them a bunch of business cases and said pick winners and losers. And then we taught them disruption theory. And we said, now try it again. And I'm glossing over all the details that make the findings, I hope, believable. But what we found is that the users of disruption theory improved their accuracy by up to 50%.”

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  49. “The Innovators Manifesto came out in 2011, and it was an attempt to do, as you say, actually use the theory to predict outcomes. And it's tricky. It was a lab experiment, and it was done using MBA students largely. I've had a chance to replicate it using executives now and have achieved essentially the same results. Oh, that's good to hear.”

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  50. “Part of the reason that I find disruption theory so powerful is that now when people say, well, this is completely different because it's so much faster. I'm like, actually, no, it's not completely different. It is a quantitatively different outcome, but it is qualitatively the same phenomenon. We can use the same theoretical toolkit to understand what's happening. The specifics are different. That's why we play the game, but we can use the same theory to understand and to your point predict and maybe even control.”

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