Text Sushi by Alf Rehn

Let’s all blame Clayton Christensen. When he coined the notion of disruptive technology, he relaunched a meme that had been fairly dormant, even though Joseph Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” never quite went out of fashion. After Christensen, everything started to be about the disruption, the destruction of old industries, the young overthrowing the old — in short, a popular if simplistic depiction of evolutionary principles in the business world. However, this often missed a more subtle point. While it is possible to find a couple of companies that are rigid and unresponsive, most companies are by nature adaptive.

The notion of disruption is often confused with the notion of dying industries. While there obviously have been such cases — buggywhip-makers losing out to the car-industry, ice-factories being displaced by the refrigerator — these might in fact be a lot rarer than we think. Scratch a modern, wired, internet-savvy bank, and you might well find a paper trail back to the 19th century. Technology companies come in more flavors than just IT and communications, and can have quite impressive pedigrees. The Finnish-Swedish company Stora Enso, which is in the technology-business of pulp and paper, can trace itself back to 1288. While it is true that we’ve seen companies tumble and fall, the less obvious case of companies actually surviving disruption deserves some attention.

This makes for less intriguing reading, but still. Why are we so afraid to admit that companies can adapt to disruptors? Why are we more fascinated by cases where a company like Skype beats an old industry, and turn away and yawn when the same companies then adapt, co-opt or just go out an buy the disruptors?