Disrupting Disruption Pt. 2 — Ben Thompson
The “divine discontent” critique
Welcome to part 2 of my series on disruption theory!
In part 1, I laid out the classic version of the theory, as Clay Christensen articulated it in the 90s. So now we’re ready to meet the challengers.
First up, of course, is Ben Thompson. He’s the author of Stratechery, creator of “Aggregation Theory”, and the undisputed GOAT of strategy newslettering.
To be clear, Ben Thompson is a huge fan of Clay Christensen. He’s said he thinks disruption theory is “95% right” — but the other 5% must be pretty important to him, given that he’s been developing a critique of it ever since he was a MBA student back in 2010; three years before he founded Stratechery.