Author Archives: Timothy B Lee

One of the people whose work has shaped my thinking on the role of disruptive innovation in declining industries is Clusterstock editor (and Techdirt alum) Joe Weisenthal. There’s a common argument that declining companies need to ask themselves “what business … Continue reading →

A common trope of the right is to accuse the left of “moral relativism.” On this view, conservatives believe in an objective sense of right and wrong, while liberals believe that morality is just a matter of personal preference. So … Continue reading →

The law is always a game for insiders, but patent law is almost in a class by itself. Debates about patent law are dominated by practicing patent attorneys and law professors (who are often former patent attorneys). This is perhaps … Continue reading →

So I was getting ready to link to this piece by Robert Capps in Wired about the rise of “good enough” technology. I was planning to point out that this was just another term for disruptive innovation. I was congratulating … Continue reading →

A key part of Christensen’s thesis is the idea that disruptive technologies inevitably catch up to incumbent technologies over time. I think the reasons for this are worth exploring in a bit more detail, because it helps explain why Christensen’s … Continue reading →

If I ran the world, no one would be allowed to opine about the decline of the newspaper industry until they’d read The Innovator’s Dilemma. The web is so clearly a disruptive technology, and the newspaper industry is so clearly … Continue reading →

On Monday, I mentioned in passing the Church Committee, the post-Watergate Congressional committee that uncovered evidence of massive lawbreaking by the executive branch. The Committee’s report was incredibly important in helping the public understand the depth and breadth of Cold … Continue reading →

Clayton M. Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma is one of those instant classics whose central concepts have spread far beyond those who’ve actually read the book. As a result, the phrase is commonly used as a generic buzzword in discussions of … Continue reading →

My post about Alex Jones’s Fresh Air sparked a really interesting email discussion with a reader who pointed out another commonly-cited advantage of newspapers: their superior accuracy. Now, I think the accuracy of mainstream media outlets is sometimes overstated (see … Continue reading →

Julian offers a thought experiment designed to sharpen progressives’ thnking about health care. He writes: For the purposes of our example, suppose that the correct conception [of justice in our hypothetical society] seeks to neutralize to some extent the effects … Continue reading →