Send Lawyers, Guns and Money –dealing with Disruption 2.0

By Anders Drejer & Christer Vindeløv-Lidzélius

Send Lawyers, Guns and Money

Taken totally by surprise by the changes in Communist Cuba in the 1960s, the fictional main character of singer/songwriter Warren Zevon’s 1988 song is thrown into jail and writes to his father — send Lawyers, Guns and Money, Dad, get me out of this! The sentence perfectly sums up the first reaction of top managers when their industry is being disrupted.

Somewhat to the surprise of those of us who worked in the field of innovation management in the late 1990’s, the concept of disruption has come back to create major interest in the fields of management research, in the general public and notably amongst politicians all over the world. In the authors´ native land of Denmark, the current Government has even appointed an advisory board to advise the Government on the effects of disruption upon the Danish Society. Interestingly, the members of the advisory board consist of a mixed selection of top managers from old industrial companies, representatives from NGOs and people from the cultural elite, including a comedian, but, alas, no scientists specializing in disruption! Perhaps, it is a good idea to devote some space and effort to trace the origins and contents of disruption.

The Rise of Disruption

In tracing the origins of disruption, it is hard not to mention Clayton M. Christensen, who introduced the concept of “disruptive technological change” in his seminal “Innovator’s Dilemma” from 1998. And it is true that the word “disruptive” — as opposed to so-called “sustainable” technological changes, changes that help current market leaders to continue to be so — seems to have been coined Christensen and his school of thought.

However, Christensen was far from the only one to acknowledge the importance of technological changes to the field of management and, more importantly, to the work of top managers all of the world. For instance, back in 1995, Bettis and Hitt writes on that same issue that:” … technology is rapidly altering the nature of competition in the late twentieth century …” and, in fact, guest-edit an issue of the Strategic Management Journal entirely devoted to discussing how technology will change the nature of competition and strategy in the years to come. Bettis & Hitt refers to the situation as “the new competitive landscape”.

It is also paramount to mention the work of Downes & Mui, who, at the same time as Christensen and others tapped into technological change, offered some form of explanation as to why technology and technological change seems to have such a profound impact on competition and strategy. Downes & Mui observed that the basic problem of technological changes is that they often happen much faster than we as people, organisation or societies are able to adapt.

The Comeback

To us, it is important to note that the concept of disruption has evolved since its origins. When disruption originated, the concept was primarily an advancement in theory — a concept that thanks to Clayton M. Christensen help us explain why certain kinds of technological change will topple current market leaders in favour of new ones, whereas other kinds of technological change will sustain current market leaders. When the idea of exponential technological change was born, almost at the same time, it became clear to a lot of researchers that the idea of competition and, therefore, strategic management needed to be reconsidered in light of disruption and the effects of disruption. Obviously, this was important to the scientific community and to managers and entrepreneurs riding the first wave of what was to come, but hardly noticed by the general public and its representatives, the legislators.

This has since changed. Disruption anno 2021 does not only urge us to find out new ways to conduct management in theory and practice. Disruption anno 2021 is a force that forces us to rethink how we define our societies, families and social structures in order to survive in the future.

Disruption anno 2021 is a force that changes society as we know it.

On a personal note, the idea that the concept of disruption for good reasons has changed over the years is much more appealing to us than the alternative. The alternative being that politicians simply have not picked up on all of our work on disruption for 20 years or that we have failed to communicate its importance to said politicians?

Consider this: did your national leaders react with due diligence to Disruption 2.0? Or did they try with Lawyers, Guns, and Money?