Disruption (society and politics)
Disruption is a process in which an existing business model or an entire market is replaced or "smashed" by a rapidly growing innovation. A disruptive idea is not simply a further development of a product, but a completely new development with completely new approaches. It ensures - transferred to the corporate world - that existing structures and organizations are broken up and, if successful, destroyed.
Development of the term
The new German word disruption (or disruptive ) was from the English adopted where disruption - derived from the Latin verb disrumpere (tear, break, crush, or liabilities: burst) - as much as interruption , malfunction , breakdown , disorder or destruction means .
The word disruption appeared for the first time in isolated cases in the mid-1990s in print media in the context of microbiology or advertising. About a decade later, it was occasionally used in connection with technological innovations . Since 2015, the term digital disruption has been used in the context of business and society , especially in the start-up scene.
In 1997, Clayton M. Christensen laid out his theory of disruptive technology in his book The Innovator's Dilemma . He claimed that every established company would at some point be threatened by a revolution that would destroy its very existence, but that these disruptive processes were inevitable in functioning markets and necessary for progress.
Disruption as a criterion for startup companies
The word start-up is used almost inflationarily in the start-up scene, but not every young and innovative company is a start-up. The peculiarity that defines such a thing is the power to disrupt. A startup must have a disruptive idea that ensures that existing structures and organizations are broken up and, if successful, destroyed. However, this is by no means meant negatively and destructively, but rather positive and progressive. Start-ups are to use new, very special concepts to optimize previous products, working methods and processes in such a way that they become obsolete, perish and disappear due to a lack of competitiveness . The disruption is intended to replace old structures with completely new ones - mostly simpler or more convenient , above all more effective. A disruptive idea does not mean a simple further development of a product, but instead a completely new development with completely new approaches, which makes certain business models and even entire industries obsolete.
By disruption suggests the evolution into revolution .
Disruption through digitization
Due to the advancing digitization, more upheavals are happening now than in the past - and these are often much faster. As a previously analog product or a mostly analog structure is therefore often replaced by digital processes or a purely digital service, disruptive concepts are often referred to as a "digital revolution". These or other similar-sounding word creations are used because there is still no correct German translation for what is meant by disruption. However, it should also be noted that digitization does not always mean disruption.
Examples of disruption
Digitization of the media
Musicians and bands once signed contracts with publishers who did advertising and marketing and brought the LPs or cassettes to retail outlets and consumers through a distribution partner . The development of the CD in the 1970s did not lead to a disruption, because the manufacturers of LPs and turntables were able to convert production to the new technology and little changed for the retail sector. The first disruptive upheaval came with MP3 files. Now pieces of music could be sold and exchanged over the Internet, eliminating the need for CD pressing and distribution, record stores and other intermediate steps. Then this form of music business also suffered a disruptive displacement through streaming.
For videos , computer games, software and books there were similar developments.
Knowledge acquisition
If you previously wanted to know something in detail and guaranteed to be safe, you had to look it up in specialist books or encyclopedias. If you didn't have them, you had to buy them from bookstores or go to a library. Today the almost infinite Internet is replacing printed knowledge with a wealth of information, for example in the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia . Even if the search on the Internet may be tedious and the accuracy of the information uncertain, it is more up-to-date than any book knowledge. In any case, the printed 30-volume Brockhaus Encyclopedia is no longer published.
telecommunications
Who among young people still knows the Swiss Post's standard telephone with rotary dial? Even cell phones are more than outdated by smartphones with their variety of mobile apps : in addition to telephony, also as notebooks, heart rate monitors, photo and video cameras, music players, game consoles, information media, etc.
Impact on society
While technology is the cause of disruption, it also affects procedures, mindsets, processes, systems and entire cultures.
literature
- Christensen, Clayton M .: The innovator's dilemma: when new technologies cause great firms to fail. Boston, Massachusetts, Harvard Business School Press, 1997. ISBN 978-0-87584-585-2 .
- Galloway, Scott: The Four: The Secret DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. Plassen Verlag, Kulmbach, 2017. ISBN 978-3-86470-487-1 .
- Meyer, Jens-Uwe: Digital Disruption: The Next Level of Innovation. BusinessVillage GmbH, Göttingen 2016. ISBN 978-3-86980-345-6 .
- Mutius, Bernhard von: Disruptive Thinking: Thinking that is up to the future. GABAL Verlag GmbH, Offenbach 2017. ISBN 978-3-86936-790-3
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ founder scene [1]
- ↑ startup knowledge [2]
- ↑ startupwissen.biz : " Business word of the year" 2015 [3]
- ↑ startupwissen.biz [4]
- ↑ founder scene [5]
- ↑ startupwissen.biz [6]
- ↑ startupwissen.biz [7]
- ↑ The Myth of Disruption [8]
- ↑ founder scene [9]
- ↑ startupwissen.biz [10]
- ↑ startupwissen.biz [11]
- ↑ startupwissen.biz [12]
- ↑ The Myth of Disruption [13]