OSIAS COLLEGES, INC.

F. Tanedo St., Tarlac City Philippines 2300

Name: Jennifer M. Manarang Date: January 28, 2022

Course and Year level: MBA 201 Score:

A. Title: DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGY

B. Presentor: Cielo Regine Reganit

Disruptive technology has captured the popular imagination of tech enthusiasts. Slo-

gans like ‘disrupt or be disrupted’ abound amongst eager business school graduates looking to

cash in on the next digital start-up while ‘disruptive technology festivals’ hosted by educa-

tional institutions, industry groups, and celebrities parallel a celebration of start-ups and tech-

nology hubs that, according to entrepreneurs and media pundits, equate economic prosperity

with disruption.

Disruptive technology can be considered part of what Benoit Godin (2015) identifies

as the “value episteme” of the contemporary iteration of the concept of technology in which

“technology becomes a value per se, the verbal arsenal of honour and praise…object of vener-

ation and cult worship…a panacea for every socioeconomic problem” (p.6).

Indeed, a simple search of the terms “disruption” or “disruptive technology” across

different English language newspapers and periodicals shows that the usage of the term is in-

creasing in both business publications and the mainstream media such that it has become pre-

dictable to describe new technologies or sociotechnical processes as “disruptive.”

Given the variations of technological determinism that endow disruptive technology

with a sense of triumphant inevitability, it would be easy to be skeptical about the rhetoric that

surrounds this concept. But it would be a mistake to dismiss this rhetoric as empty posturing.

Disruptive technology has, of course, been subject to criticism and empirical scrutiny.

Business professors have found many of the historical and predictive claims of the theory

questionable (King & Baarartogtokh 2015) while social theorists and historians deride the
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concept as an empty slogan used to dress-up old fashioned ideas about progress and contem-

porary neo-liberal ambitions (Lepore 2014).

Yet, despite the ease with which writers dismiss the idea of disruptive technology, it is

not insignificant that one reads that Google’s forays into health care are “disruptive” or that

Uber is “disrupting” the taxi industry. In these and many other instances, a whole series of

shared understandings and expectations are drawn upon to explain complex sociotechnical

processes through one handy and self-explanatory idea: disruptive technology.

Drawing out in more detail some of the elements that characterize the idea of disrup-

tive technology reveals that it is an idea that contains within it a distinct attitude towards the

sociotechnical world. It is a way to think about technology that corresponds with standards

and expectations that direct technological society towards particular ends while simultane-

ously foregoing other ends.

Drawing from different examples of disruptive technologys, it is possible to identify a

few key elements that characterize disruptive technology, both in its original formation and its

more popular version.

First, disruptive technology is oriented towards “new and emerging” technologies.

Those technologies that are “old and unchanging” do not seem to register as anything other

than impediments to disruption.

Second, within the schema of disruption, individuals and social groups are prioritized

as consumers, not workers. For consumers, the fruits of disruptive technology are conve-

nience, choice, and speed; for labour, disruptive technology tends to bring precariousness, the

dismantling of organized labour, and increased competition amongst workers.

What tech enthusiasts call “disruption” is in fact almost always directed at forms of

organization that preserve a modicum of workers’ control over knowledge and the products

of labor. Because London taxicabs are controlled by people who have built up impressive
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maps of one of the world’s most complex cities in their brains, they ought to be replaced by

self-driving cars operating on Google maps…automation isn’t a neutral, inevitable part of

capitalism. It comes about through the desire to break formal and informal systems of

workers’ control – including unions – and replace them with managerially controlled

and minutely surveilled systems of piecework” (“After Capitalism,” n+1, Winter

2016, p.10).

Even the state must cede control to consumers who are in danger of missing out on the

benefits of disruptive technology because of laws and regulations. In a paper titled “Disrupt-

ing Law School” produced by the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Technology,

one reads that:

Regulations—such as bar licensure and restrictions on the unauthorized practice of

law—will not protect lawyers and law schools from disruption in the long term. Lessons from

regulated industries show that disruptors can topple the incumbents in these industries by first

innovating outside of the reach of regulators; as the up-starts accumulate a sufficient number

of customers, regulators cave ex post facto to the new reality in reaction to the innovator’s

success (Pistone & Horn 2016, p.8).

Third, disruptive technology as a theory that explains sociotechnical change tends to

flourish in cultures where fear is predominant. For example, business professor Joshua Gans

(2016) writes, “that following the dot com bust and 9/11, the world’s managers were receptive

to a message of fear.” Similarly, the historian Jill Lepore notes that: “Disruptive technology is

competitive strategy for an age seized by terror… It’s a theory of history founded on a pro-

found anxiety about financial collapse, an apocalyptic fear of global devastation.”

Indeed, the narrative thread in the NY Times Report on Technology is a sense of panic

and fear in which change is necessary because “the need is urgent” to grow audience engage-

ment (p.24) while “the pace of change is so fast that solutions can quickly seem out of date”

(p.56).
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This culture of fear has also developed its own history in which any sense of continu-

ity with the past is rejected in favor of an “intense present” in which unforeseen forces stand

ready to disrupt, at any time, any collective sense of safety or confidence in the world as it is.