Are you a Disruptive Technology?
Disruptive? Who You Calling Disruptive?
By Marydee Ojala, Online, Vol. 28 No. 4 Ñ July/August 2004.
In this short article, Ojala discusses
Clayton Christensen’s book The Innovator’s Dilemma. She notes that some technologies, such as the printing press and the Internet, are
disruptive and require a “complete rethinking of an existing business model.” These, she notes are “endemic to the library and information world.”
She proposes, though, that people too can be “disruptive technologies” and proposes that
we “rethink our priorities, and assert our distinctiveness.”
Does the Internet disrupt how libraries operate? Yes. Does it alter their look and feel? Yes. Does it afford opportunities libraries lacked before? Yes. Does it disrupt the basic reasons why libraries exist? No.