As I understand it there are three types of innovation: revolutionary, evolutionary, and disruptive, the latter being described as:
An innovation that creates a new (and unexpected) market by applying a different set of values. (E.g., the lower priced Ford Model T)
Not sure how this applies, or even it can apply to religion. Would Mormonism be a “disruptive innovation”? That would have to be in the eye of the beholder, and something subjective. Can it benefit everyone at “cheaper rates”? (The Ford Model T of religion, so to speak.) It certainly has benefited Christensen, but it can also plainly be just disruptive in many other lives. I think the term is more applicable in economics, technology and medicine.
I think Christensen is probably right that the future of medicine and health care issues will centre on self-diagnosis (we’ve already seen some examples of that on this board). Doctors can sometimes get it notoriously wrong, and perhaps a lot in this field is
already intuitive (complicating this is that the same symptoms can apply to so many diseases).
The Americans look at Canada, Europe and Australia, where the government is the payer. Maybe we ought to adopt their model. And the Europeans and the Australians are saying, "You know, this isn't working very well, maybe we ought to adopt the U.S. model."
The reason the Australian model “isn’t working” is because people rush off to a doctor at the first sign of a cold (so to speak), or thinking that a blister is developing skin cancer. Better to be safe than sorry, so the system becomes overloaded (thus placing the financial burden back on tax/medicare levy payers). A doctor relative of mine once told me that the majority of his patients visit more for “psychological sustenance” and comfort than actual physical diseases that require immediate attention. Free health care is a hypochondriac’s dream. Yet, the government fails in the far more crucial area of providing free dental care, or even cheaper dental care (a toothache isn’t something imaginary). Honestly, I very rarely visit a doctor, probably because I have “fortunate genes” or just plain luck in regard to health (so far, anyway, which I suppose could run out any day, and prophecies of my imminent demise have been made). Maybe I’m playing roulette, but when I have “worrying symptoms” I adopt a wait and see approach, and in 90% of cases it turns out to be benign. Not so in Christensen’s case, since he suffered a heart attack, cancer and stroke (I note though that he waited days before acting on the symptoms of his heart attack, a sort of roulette, too).
In any case, the concept is a very interesting one (which I hadn't heard of before), simplified by Christensen here:
Key Concepts - Disruptive Innovation.
