麻豆社

David Cannadine tells the story behind the buzzword Disruptors, which is actually an abbreviation of the original phrase Disruptive Technologies.

This stems from an academic article, written in 1995, by two Harvard Business School Professors, Joseph Bower and Clayton Christensen, in which they explained why big, successful, companies often lose out to new start-ups. David speaks to Joseph Bower about concept at the heart of this theory.

Clayton Christensen further evolved the concept into 鈥榙isruptive innovation鈥� in his best-selling book The Innovator's Dilemma, published in 1997. It became the handbook of generations of entrepreneurs and disruptive innovation has since been called the 鈥渕ost influential business idea of the 21st century鈥�. It could be said that Silicon Valley was built on the concept of disruptive innovation - the vision of disrupting traditional industry with new tech start-ups, perhaps built out of the back of a garage, lies at its very foundations.

With the digital age came a new work culture - disruptive start-ups, led by ambitious young disruptors, introduced a new way of doing business and making money. But as with all Buzzwords, once the word gets buzzy, it can loose its original meaning, and in this case it was used to describe anything new and all entrepreneurs became disruptors.

Today, the use of this buzzword has ranged beyond the field of business, and is even to be found in the world of politics, but how appropriate is the use of this buzzword in the political sphere?

With Joseph Bower, Mark Casson, Ellen Manning and Ashleigh Hinde

Researcher: Joe Christmas

Produced by Melissa FitzGerald

A Blakeway production for 麻豆社 Radio 4

The series is made in collaboration with The British Academy.

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