They looked a picture of respectability and restraint. But on Wednesday, when Rebecca Newsom and Ami McCarthy held up their Greenpeace banner with the words “Who voted for this?” on it, their neighbours in the Birmingham conference hall were not impressed. Conservative party members may have applauded the prime minister’s words about the value of disruption. But this was not the sort of disruption they had had in mind.
Why does this D-word hold such an allure for the shiny-eyed advocates of a bracing future? The story begins 25 years ago, with the publication of a book called The Innovator’s Dilemma by a Harvard Business School professor, Clay Christensen.
Christensen argued that businesses can go wrong when they persist with plausible and incremental development (“sustaining innovation”) when in fact something cheaper, scrappier but more radical might uncover new and untapped demand for something (“disruptive…
