On the Banality of Disruptive Innovation

When a herd grabs hold of something, odds are that its original meaning will not only get trampled over, but also in a way that turns it up-side down before spreading it all over as if it were sweet-smelling manure. Particularly striking is the ensuing willfulness that typically contravenes efforts to pen in the herd to the confines of the term’s definition. I have in mind the erroneous and even tautological self-aggrandizing trajectory of the term disruption in the business sector of society. Drawing on Nietzsche, I submit that the offending sickness is centered in an interlarding presumptuousness to define an existing word conveniently, even in ways that are antithetical to the received meaning. That is to say, this cultural problem involves more than garden-variety ignorance.

The full essay has been incorporated into (or swallowed up by) On the Arrogance of False Entitlement: A Nietzschean Critique of Business Ethics and Management, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.