People in the tech space generally accept the Innovator’s Dilemma written by Clayton M. Christensen as fact – companies need to either disrupt or be disrupted. Jill Lepore writing for the New Yorker Magazine questions much of what is “accepted wisdom” or as Al Gore might call it, “settled science” in a well-researched and written piece debunking much of what techies have believed for decades.

Lepore’s argument is that the book uses handpicked case studies which aren’t necesarily cut and dry in terms of their outcomes. Moreover, the innovators aren’t always more successful than the incumbents as you can see from this passage below:

In fact, Seagate Technology was not felled by disruption. Between 1989 and 1990, its sales doubled, reaching $2.4 billion, “more than all of its U.S. competitors combined,” according to an industry report. In 1997, the year Christensen published “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” Seagate was the largest company in the disk-drive industry, reporting revenues of nine billion dollars. Last year, Seagate shipped its two-billionth disk drive. Most of the entrant firms celebrated by Christensen as triumphant disrupters, on the other hand, no longer exist, their success having been in some cases brief and in others illusory.

He continues:

As striking as the disruption in the disk-drive industry seemed in the nineteen-eighties, more striking, from the vantage of history, are the continuities. Christensen argues that incumbents in the disk-drive industry were regularly destroyed by newcomers. But today, after much consolidation, the divisions that dominate the industry are divisions that led the market in the nineteen-eighties. (In some instances, what shifted was their ownership: I.B.M. sold its hard-disk division to Hitachi, which later sold its division to Western Digital.) In the longer term, victory in the disk-drive industry appears to have gone to the manufacturers that were good at incremental improvements, whether or not they were the first to market the disruptive new format. Companies that were quick to release a new product but not skilled at tinkering have tended to flame out.

Another subject of the book, Bucyrus was a victim of disruption – did indeed enter Chapter 11 protection but emerged some years later as an entity which was sold for nearly nine billion dollars.

The point is, companies can indeed come back from a disruptive influence – Apple is a great example.

Google seems to be involved in every industry we can imagine; cars, robotics, satellites, fiber, etc. because – you guessed it, it is afraid to be disrupted by new entrants. Amazon launched its Fire Phone today with 3D technology and the ability to scan and buy virtually limitless products because it fears disruption from Google, Apple and app developers.

It included its famous Mayday help button powered by WebRTC making this technology available beyond just the company’s tablets.

Speaking of WebRTC – the industry’s largest show WebRTC Expo is taking place this week in Atlanta, GA and what I am seeing here is massive technological disruption which IS changing business models. There are over a hundred companies speaking, sponsoring and exhibiting solutions – many are new ones you’ve never heard of. Then there are the incumbent providers, AudioCodes, Dialogic, Avaya, Huawei, Oracle, GENBAND and others adding WebRTC to their offerings.

Yesterday I wrote about how AudioCodes already adapted thanks to Alan Percy who has seen disruption before and as a result raised early alarm bells at his company and as a result made it possible for a big phone sale.

This too shows how incumbent companies CAN be disruptive.

The latter part of WebRTC stands for real-time communications and it is unquestionable that this technology will change the way we interact. One “killer” application I mentioned onstage at this conference yesterday and have written about was the twinning of a phone with a web browser allowing a service provider to provide increased functionality to its customers. I was roundly criticized by an analyst and others who told me at best this was a boring idea.

Then about two hours ago I had a briefing with Truphone and they announced this exact application.

Is it a killer app because I said it is? Perhaps not… But if you are a carrier watching your marketshare erode due to myriad (yes disuptive) OTT providers, you likely will consider it so as it allows you to provide a FaceTime-like service on all devices. For the first time, a carrier can easily expand beyond its core footprint and potentially generate reveue and or add to their valuation. History as they say will decide if this is something the public wants but I can guarantee you that carriers who don’t adapt to WebRTC risk becoming dumb pipe-only providers or possibly getting eliminated by more nimble competition.

Moreover, what is perhaps most interesting is there is no consensus on what will and won’t be successful in this new market. In other words we know there will be disruption. We are living it. But still, we aren’t sure what direction it will take.

VoIP disrupted telecom – it doesn’t mean that it killed the established players (some of course are gone) but it did give major advantages to new companies like Cisco. Still, new disruptive technologies can help kill off incumbents if they don’t adapt properly.

The good news is that Lepore reminds us that most startups fail and moreover that incumbents can adapt, restructure and thrive. Think the second tenure of Steve Jobs at Apple – or IBM.

The point is, you need to embrace change and innovation and not be afraid to cannibalize existing businesses as you get into news ones. And if this is what you take away from this article and disruption in general, I think we’ll all be in good shape.