June 30, 2009
How industries fail
Perhaps the most fascinating bit of Michael Nielsen’s article “Is Scientific Publishing About to Be Disrupted?” is a wish list of science-oriented Web services. It’s bracketed, however, by one of the better discussions I’ve seen of how the Internet has changed the media system and why so many otherwise intelligent people are still singing LA LA LA, I CAN’T HEAR YOU:
There are two common explanations for the disruption of industries like minicomputers, music, and newspapers. The first explanation is essentially that the people in charge of the failing industries are stupid. How else could it be, the argument goes, that those enormous companies, with all that money and expertise, failed to see that services like iTunes and Last.fm are the wave of the future? Why did they not pre-empt those services by creating similar products of their own? Polite critics phrase their explanations less bluntly, but nonetheless many explanations boil down to a presumption of stupidity. The second common explanation for the failure of an entire industry is that the people in charge are malevolent. In that explanation, evil record company and newspaper executives have been screwing over their customers for years, simply to preserve a status quo that they personally find comfortable.
It’s true that stupidity and malevolence do sometimes play a role in the disruption of industries. But in the first part of this essay I’ll argue that even smart and good organizations can fail in the face of disruptive change, and that there are common underlying structural reasons why that’s the case. That’s a much scarier story. If you think the newspapers and record companies are stupid or malevolent, then you can reassure yourself that provided you’re smart and good, you don’t have anything to worry about. But if disruption can destroy even the smart and the good, then it can destroy anybody.
(Via Richard Nash and some other people)
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Damn–I just read this whole thing, and it gave me the thrill I remember getting the first time I read Thomas Khun’s The Structures of Scientific Revolutions. Thanks India. The whole thing reminded me too of the philosophy of history, and the way prevailing notions of the “engine” of historical movement are rendered popular (or not) depending on crests and troughs of change–with all such notions being viewed as somehow independent of such change. Maybe part of the immune system being discussed here is the notion of objectivity as a static quality rather than a mode of fluid adaptation: a lag time called prudence that, as the old saying goes, locks the door after the house has been robbed. Also, I thought of how many times great breakthoughs have come by way of casual meeting of like minds–an hour’s train ride together, to go to a play, that generates a play of ideas in a context that is free of a fear of failure. Isn’t that what lots of blogs offer?