This is What Disruption Looks Like
This week’s Super Bowl LVIII marks 40 years since Apple introduced the world to Macintosh in a dramatic Super Bowl XVIII advertisement. That moment launched a new era of personal computing, which catalyzed the creation of the Internet and today’s digital economy.
Consider an alternative history: What if the world had reacted to Ridley Scott’s iconic counter-Orwellian vision and the original 128K Mac in the same way we typically react to new technologies today?
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The Macintosh would have been roundly dismissed.
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Such critiques aren’t such a stretch of the imagination; they’re strikingly similar to comments that have been lobbed at Vision Pro for months (the volume of which has increased since its launch on February 2nd). Even commentators who are “blown away” by the sensory experience wonder out loud “what is this good for?” and “why would anyone want this?” while assuming that it’s just too expensive to be taken seriously.
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We don’t yet know if the Vision Pro will be a commercial flop or success. We also don’t yet know if it is the opening gambit in a new computing paradigm (just as the iPhone, which was not a very good telephone, was the opening gambit in a prior generation's new computing paradigm).
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In fact, nobody knows. So how do we interpret the moment?
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By owning the fact that we don’t know. To acknowledge that uncertainty, and give 3D immersive computing a chance to develop for a period of years (not weeks or months) before declaring any particular device and the computing paradigm it represents dead on arrival. Nor does it make sense to dismiss major investment in the space as irresponsible –– much like everyone did to Meta and the Metaverse in the last cycle.?
This is precisely what disruptive innovation looks like.?
Clayton Christensen was crystal clear when he developed the term and the theory behind it in the mid 1990s. His most important insight: disruptive technologies often seem to ––?at first ––be less capable than the “old” technology; and more like toys. As a result, disruptive tech appeals to a different audience and customer base than existing technologies. What makes a technology truly disruptive is that it is on a much steeper curve of improvement than existing technologies. A few years later, the curves cross and the disruptive technology wins.
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The classic snapshot of what this looks like:
There are three lessons to be learned for how we react to today’s emerging technology paradigms, in 2024 and beyond. Call them the Three Ps of disruptive innovation.
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1.?First, bring patience. Somehow the world has come to expect that a new technology should be nearly flawless, completely familiar, and integrate seamlessly into our lives with almost no effort at the time it is first introduced. In other words, users shouldn’t have to learn anything new in order to use it, or change their habits and experiences at all, much less read instructions or encounter any frustrations along the way.
But that’s not how truly disruptive technologies work. Our collective lack of patience and laziness today, had it been this way in 1984, would have consigned the Macintosh to failure and Apple to irrelevance as soon as the original Mac crashed and froze (which it did on a regular basis). Today, this lack of patience makes it very hard to promote anything other than a marginal improvement on the technologies we already know how to use. That is what Christensen called “sustaining innovation” (as compared to disruptive) and it is precisely where businesses, ecosystems, and entire societies get stuck. Disruptive innovation requires patience - from users, and from investors.?
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2. Second, maintain perspective. Generative AI burst onto the scene in late 2022 after years of research led to a threshold effect where large language models suddenly and surprisingly became remarkably useful. That’s exciting, but it’s also become distracting in many respects. Just now if a technology product doesn’t label itself as “AI”, no one seems to pay attention. It’s a bit farcical, to the point where things we used to call machine learning or even just plain “technology” are now called AI –– including your washing machines’ water temperature sensors; your toothbrush’s timer; your search bar’s auto-complete function.?
In contrast, Apple’s new spatial computing label sounds like something disruptive and different – because it is. The same was true of Zuckerberg’s Metaverse vision. The fact that these 3D immersive computing paradigms incorporate and depend on some of the most advanced machine learning science (in other words, AI) doesn’t seem to impact our attention threshold. Mark Zuckerberg has been at pains to re-label Meta’s research and development efforts as AI-focused, while trying to explain at the same time that the Metaverse is still the future he’s aiming to build. Apple chooses not to talk much about AI, just build it and use it in the background to enable the functionality of its most advanced products. We’d all be better off with a bit more perspective that puts ‘AI’ in its place as just one way to think about where the future of technology is heading.
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3. Third, remember the people. Disruptive technologies often appeal, as we said, to a different audience and user base. Apple made this explicit by marketing the Mac as “the computer for the rest of us” –– everyone who was not using a PC at work in 1984 (which was most of the world).
It took a long time to get there: For years, the Mac was mainly a hit with designers, creatives, and in the education market, but had difficulty penetrating the business world. Apple’s critics derided the Mac as an expensive indulgence that would never grow beyond its supposed luxury good niche. But truly disruptive innovation doesn’t stay in a niche, because when the curves cross and the new technology outperforms the old, it’s only a matter of time until people make the leap.
In the case of the Mac, it was actually Microsoft that made the leap possible by “porting” the office suite (Word, Powerpoint, Excel) to run on the Macintosh operating system in 1989 –– five years into the Mac’s journey. The computer for the rest of us was suddenly a computer for all of us, including traditional business markets that had been more or less owned by Wintel (Windows + Intel).
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Disruptive innovation is what powers technology revolutions. But it’s rarely a comfortable, familiar, or straightforward process. It’s just too easy to dismiss disruptive tech –– whether that’s for being expensive, inferior, useless, toy-like, or all of the above.
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Steve Jobs loved to quote Henry Ford’s quip: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” The genius of both Ford and Jobs was to see past that blind spot and persist with disruption. Meta, to its credit, is determinedly persisting with the Metaverse project, and has welcomed the Vision Pro as a competitive spur to the overall ecosystem. It’s unfortunate that today’s media and market environments seem to have made it even harder for the rest of us to see these trajectories of disruptive innovation for what they are and might become.
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The 1984 Big Brother character in Ridley Scott’s ad needed a sledgehammer thrown in his face. 2024 would be a good moment to reflect on the value of more subtle signals about how we can promote fundamental innovation –– and create space for true disruption.
This week's edition of The Intersection was written by Steven Weber and Shea Agnew . Reach out to learn more.