Missed it.

Didn't read The Innovator's Dilemma. Didn't read it in 1997, 2007, 2014. It's only one of the half-dozen most important biz books of the last half-century or so per the Economist. MISSED it. :(  Read summaries of it though! :| It is the theory of "disruptive innovation" that has caused established entities like The New York Times and American universities to lose control of their bowels. (See online course being offered by Harvard and MIT.) :o

Missed that, too. Harvard Professor of History Jill Lepore's criticism of The Innovator's Dilemma this summer in The New Yorker. Have read "The Disruption Machine" now. Have read Harvard Professor of Business Administration Clayton M. Christensen's responses and the comments of others.

Academic train-wrecks, especially intramural ones (See Sokal v Ross, NYU (1996), can be fun to watch from the outside, the incongruous heat coming from those who dispense light, the breathless, lapel-grabbing back-and-forth volleys, viz:

"Historical analysis proceeds from certain conditions regarding proof. None of these conditions have been met [In Christensen's work.]"

"'The Innovator's Dilemma' consists of a set of handpicked case studies..."

"'Use theory to help guide data collection,' Christensen advises."

"Christensen tends to ignore factors that don't support his theory." 

"In the late nineteen-nineties and early two-thousands, the financial-services industry innovated by selling products like subprime mortgages...When the financial-services industry disruptively innovated it led to a global financial crisis."

"The theory of disruption is meant to be predictive. On March 10, 2000 Christensen launched a $3.8 million Disruptive Growth Fund...Christensen drew on his theory to select stocks. Less than a year later, the fund was quietly liquidated:...the Disruptive Growth Fund lost sixty-four percent."

"In 2007, Christensen told Business Week that 'the prediction of the theory would be that Apple won't succeed with the iPhone,' adding, 'History speaks pretty loudly on that.'...History speaks loudly, apparently, ony when you can make it say what you want it to say."

"In his original research, Christensen...explained that 'successful firm were arbitrarily defined as those which achieved more than fifty million dollars in revenues in constant 1987 dollars in any single year between 1977 and 1989--even if they subsequently withdrew from the market.' Much of the theory of disruptive innovation rests on this arbitrary definition of success. 

"...what bothers me so much is that all of the points that she raised were not just wrong, but they were lies." OOOH!

"And for her to take that on, to take me on and the theory on – I don't know where the meanness came from."

"...she starts instead to try to discredit Clay Christensen, in a really mean way. And mean is fine, but in order to discredit me, Jill had to break all of the rules of scholarship that she accused me of breaking—in just egregious ways, truly egregious ways."

"And if she was truly a scholar as she pretends, she would have read [those]. I hope you can understand why I am mad that a woman of her stature could perform such a criminal act of dishonesty—at Harvard, of all places."  :o 

I do not see personal attacks in "The Disruption Machine" and do not see where Christensen sees them. In reading some summary of The Innovator's Dilemma I had the thought, "Umm, this sounds a little fishy, there's circular reasoning going on here.":

"...the advocates of disruption have an affinity for circular arguments. If an established company doesn't disrupt, it will fail, and if it fails it must be because it didn't disrupt. When a startup fails, that's a success, since epidemic failure is a hallmark of disruptive innovation...When an established company succeeds, that's only because it hasn't yet failed. And, when any of these things happen, all of them are only further evidence of disruption."

Enough! We decide. Publocc no muddy judgment waters with precaution stick. We decide. Publocc decide Jill Lepore right.