47: Why it's Time to Stop Using the Word 'Disruption'

I think get kind of nervous when you ask me stuff like that. Oh yeah, I just thought, you know, it's been a while. I wasn't on last week, so I wanted to catch up. That's true. That's true. You were away. You missed Matt Levin and Space Robots, So I'm sorry a little worried um that he did better than me. So I'm kind of I'm trying. I haven't listened to it yet because I don't want to see if he's better than me, you have to stuff it

up today. So Space Robot, So technology is pretty cool. Huh. Yeah, it's impressive and it seems to make a lot of people, potentially a lot of money. So, speaking of technology and making a lot of money. You know, another cool thing you can do with technology is I feel like this is a trick go on. You can you can catch up with old friends that you haven't seen in twenty years on Facebook. No way. And actually our guest today is someone who I don't think I've seen probably in

like twenty two or twenty three years. He's an old middle school friend of mine from when I lived in Juliet, Illinois, who which is a kind of a suburb of Chicago. Is is this what odd thoughts has been reduced to?

You're just bringing on your your school friends. It is, but there's also it is so part of it is just an excuse to catch up with an old friend, but we're also going to be talking about there's also a relevant angle related to technology g because our guest is a historian of technology at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey, and he recently gave a great speech called the Innovation Fetish, which is about why it's so bad that we're obsessed with words like disruption and

innovation and why it's so perverse that we can't stop talking in this sort of nonsense language that we've all constructed and come to accept. So those are words that we see on almost every technology press release that comes our way, right, We we read them and see them unquestionably, like no one ever talks about why are we talking

about innovation so much? And are we really getting anywhere by hammering home the importance of innovation and disruption and entrepreneurship and all these things that we've just sort of taken for granted are good and maybe there's a dark side to our endless Uh focus on this language of technology? Oh? I like this. I like where this is going. All right, you might be forgiven for bringing your friends on. Wasn't totally contrived? So with us is Leavin Soul. He's a professor,

as I mentioned, at the Stevens Institute of Technology. Leah, it's great to see you and thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me here. Uh So your talk uh the innovation fetish and your work focused on all these all these buzzwords that we just mentioned. So tell us about your work and why is it important to focus on the language, Uh, focus on these words? Right. So I'm a historian of technology. My first book I just wrote is on the history of auto regulation in the

United States. But for this project, what I've been looking at is tracking word usage over time, and one surprising fact you find is that the term technological innovation only comes into use in about the ninth sixties, which, ironically, if you read economists and economic historians like Robert Gordon, is about the time that really deep and meaningful technological innovation, revolutionary innovation kind of came to an end in the United States, right because we kind of hit the skids

in nineteen seventy and since then, with a couple of brief exceptions, we have not gotten back to really deep innovation and really meaningful economic growth immediately. So that's very interesting and I want to talk about that. But the first response that I think most people think is like, how can you say that we haven't seen much innovation since the sixties and seventies. I mean, our world is wildly different, largely thanks to information technology computers and phones

and the Internet and all this. So this seems to be a contestable point right off the bat, that that was actually the high water mark for UH innovation as opposed to what many people would see is the very the founding era of digital technologies and the Internet and all these things, right, So how do you back up that claim that that was sort of the peak? Right?

I mean, I think that the argument Gordon would make is that we see a period from about ninety four to two thousand four where businesses are adopting email and different internet technologies, and we see that in the economic growth numbers, but we just don't. For all of the hype about innovation and disruption all these things, we actually

don't see that in our economic growth. So in the nineteen sixties, did people suddenly start talking about technological innovation or was it a gradual change or how did it come about and why? So the way it happened was that economists, especially Robert Solo by the late nineteen fifties, they they sort of had very good economic statistics and they were realizing that tradition all explanations like changes in

capital and labor just weren't explaining the economic growth. So then they hypothesized that that hidden thing was technological change. So then amongst the economists and economic historians in the sixties and seventies, you see in policymakers too, you see more and more focus on innovation as something that we should try to foster and encourage. So what's wrong with that?

Because intuitively, it doesn't seem like there's anything wrong with policies that promote science and promote the application of science to business models, um and the promotion of technologies that will make us more efficient. So what is the downside to uh this rhetoric? I think there's two major downsides. The first is that it's not clear that these policies or changes in our institutions are actually getting us that innovation right, So we can talk about it a lot,

but is it actually producing it? And the second part is that this focus on innovation often leads us to just ignore fundamentals like infrastructure and ordinary labor, because even in a very innovative society, most people's labor is going into things like just keeping the world going. So is the implication here that because technological innovation sounds like a sexier kind of topic, that that's why people tend to focus on it more when it comes to economic growth.

Is that what we're saying? Yeah, I mean that's a big part of it. It taps into a much longer history, which is a kind of fetish around invention. There's cults of invention going all the way back to Edison and Tesla and people like this. But since nineteen seventy or nineteen eighty, there really has been this kind of constant focus on the sexy topic of innovation to the nicole act of many other basic fundamental issues, even basic technological issues.

Is innovation good and should Let's say there were a better way to achieve innovation besides talking about innovation in your view? Is that worth pursuing? Is the issue? What I'm trying to get at, is the issue with the language itself counterproductive? Or is there something more fundamental? Could we achieve have higher rates of productivity and innovation by thinking about it in some different way? Right? I think that there are smarter ways to do innovation policy, and

I think that in general, innovation is often good. So if we can find those ways to do those things, we should. But the second part then, is that there's a lot of things that we neglect when we just focus on innovation. And why is it zero sum? So walk us through how policy makers. You know, every state wants to be have its own silicon valley and sort of incubator programs for new startups, But why does that

have to be zero sum. Why does the focus on all these things necessarily detract from the labor of most people. Would you say, maintain maintain the infrastructure, a building infrastructure? Why does it have to be one or the other. Let me give you an example. So Senator uh Sam brown Back in Kansas followed traditional conservative economic thinking and cutting taxes for the wealthy um in an attempt to

induce innovation in the state. Now, maybe we've seen some job growth and innovation, but what he's ended up doing is cutting the tax base, and for that reason, he's had to continually tip go into the transportation fund, which means that kind of Kansas roads are falling apart. That

would be one example. Doesn't this just speak to the fact that technology is often something that's about, you know, a series of small discoveries and then maybe maybe you hit a jackpot that's something really revolutionary in terms of technology. I mean by pursuing technological innovation, everyone is essentially going after that jack pot, right and naturally if they don't get the jackpot, then it might look like they've lost out. Um.

That sounds good to me. I'm not sure how that's a counterexample to what I'm trying to say, is it essentially if I'm you know, if I'm understanding the question, is it basically that if everyone is sort of pursuing technological innovation in its own right, and everyone wants to be the next Mark Zuckerberg or the next Steve Jobs or the next whoever, then that guarantees that a lot of people are just going to be major losers, and a lot of people are going to have spent a

lot of money and human endeavor endeavor that gets us nowhere, right, But one person is going to get the big payout, right, like one person is going to invent the new Facebook. That's the problem, right, That's that's part of the problem. And the other thing is I think if we look at education, for instance, engineering education at the college level, it often focuses on innovation. So it's making students think to be a good person or a great person, you

have to be an innovator. And yet about eighty percent of engineering labor just goes into maintenance and upkeep, like just totally ordinary stuff. And yes, to take care of technological systems, introducing new things that introduce new efficiencies is important, we know that, but there's a more kind of fundamental and basic way of thinking about things, which is caring for things. And yes, new things will be a part of that overall process. So is this inevitable? I mean,

in your view, this was a choice. This is a value judgment that society has put on innovation, creating something new versus maintaining something new, taking pride in keeping the infrastructure of society, whether it's sort of physical infrastructure, technological infrastructure, working for people. In your view, this is a value choice that people have made. That's right. Yeah, I'm not

sure that they made it intentionally. I think these kind of terms, especially very fattish terms, kind of seduce us, right because they seem nifty, and especially when people are telling you that innovation is how we get all these good things, both increases in quality of life and economic growth, it's very natural to kind of go after that thing. I want to take a quick word for a sponsor, but knowledge to work and grow your business with c

i T from transportation to healthcare to manufacturing. C i T offers commercial lending, leasing, and treasury management services for small and middle market businesses. Learn more at c i T dot com. Put Knowledge to Work. Okay, and we're back with Lee Vincel. He's a professor of technological history at the Stevens Institute of Technology, and we are talking about the innovation fetish and the counterproductivity of our obsession

with words like innovation and entrepreneurship and disruption. Something that I'm really interested in that I think maybe you can speak to is you know, we've decided as a culture and as a society that people who build a social network and become a billionaire a few years later are lauded to the moon. They're on the cover of magazines, and everyone is told they have to hustle, and everyone is told to go out and be the CEO of their own their own brand. What what does that do for? Like?

Who wants to become a teacher in this culture, in the culture that rewards sort of going out and scoring big so fast. Who who would ever want to have like sort of like a simple profession like teaching school children? Teaching children, Yeah, it seems wait, but it has to be done. On the subway ride over here, I actually saw an ad for people becoming teachers and one of the taglines was that you could encourage children to be innovators, right, so even even to get people into teacher jobs. The

only way you can do it is through innovation. I saw. I also saw someone right running for the local school board in Maplewood, New Jersey where I lives, has the word their name and it says creativity and innovation. Right. So it's like the only point of our education system has to be innovation at this point. So what's the solution to this problem? Because, like the obvious one, I guess is um for governments or policy makers to put out some sort of um disincentive program and say we're

not going to talk about innovation anymore. We want to quash all the innovation, which sounds like a pr nightmare, right, And I would not do that. Yeah, So what would you do? All? Right, there's this is kind of tough on one level. What we're trying to do is an engender a conversation about this stuff. And what we find is just as innovation appeals kind of on both sides of the aisle to both political parties, we also see

this maintenance discussion appeal to both political parties. So after we had this conference at Stephen's Institute of Technology, it got covered by the American Conservative online magazine. So I mean, one of the things is trying to just create a conversation about that. But my co author and I Andy Russell were kind of classic progressives, right, So our answer would be to put more funding into infrastructure, which luckily more and more politicians are talking about, and then also

thinking about labor policy. So how can we encourage people to be teachers when teaching jobs in the United States pay so poorly, for instance, So sort of a spend more on it, spend more tax people, and spend more what about What do you think that would change the culture around these things, because I mean I agree, like, yes, economics would dictate if you offer teachers more money, you'll

get more people who want to be teachers. But you still, I feel, my gut would be that you still have this issue of no one is celebrating teachers and that the culture is still encouraging everyone to be a Mark Zuckerberg or a Steve Jobs or an Elon musk Um, and that you still don't have like culturally, that's that's not a thrilling thing for people. Yeah, I mean, you know, I can talk about like a public information campaign around maintenance, but I'm not gonna I'm not sure how much that

actually does. I mean, I think ultimately we have to start in the organizations we work in right and recognizing those people who are doing all the crucial work to just keep things going around us. I wanna go back real quickly, because once when I was watching your talk and thinking about this idea that this language around innovation kind of shot up around the time productivity started to plateau.

It's interesting thinking about going back to you know, say, like the inventors like Edison or Tesla, or the people invented the uh, the steam engine. What were people talking about back then? Were people talking about we need to encourage innovation? Like what was the culture around in those eras that got them really excited about inventing. I think they were excited about the technologies themselves. They are enthusiasts,

and there was new technology on the scene. It seemed like magic, you know, I mean, the light bulb is a piece of magic, and so they were enthusiasts for that. I don't think anyone had any sense that this was going to necessarily lead to economic growth at that time. That just wasn't a part of the way they're thinking. Was there any sort of rhetoric around the cult of invention, Like when did that spring up? Yeah? So that you

know it, it develops throughout the twentie centuries. By the twenties and thirties, corporations are creating things like the House of Magic that was g e and so you you started to see more and more encouragement of getting young people to think about technology and engineering. And then of course in the fifties, you know, this starts stuff starts to be tied really connect closely with the Cold War

and like beating the Russians and things like that. I mean, part of what I deal with in my written work is how in the United States innovation is often tied to fear of other people. Right, So, and you know, we can think of the Cold War and science and

technology and the Russians. But then in the eighties, innovation is really focused on the Japanese as a threat and as an economic threat, and of course by the nineties and two thousands then that switches to the Chinese and it's all about the United States place in the global economic system. So despite Silicon Valleys a sort of rhetoric about technology bringing everyone together, there's actually deep rooted relationship

to fear of others that's quite ironic. So I have a maybe it's a stupid question, but if we think that part of this problem has to do with the language itself and the use of terms like disruption and innovation, could we solve the problem by just using other words like instead of technological innovation, could we say something more boring, like I don't know, mechanical advancement. Could we call like Mark Zuckerberg the the I T guy that like got

lucky with that work. I mean that would work for me, Yeah, I know it would work for others. Um, I mean, you know, think about disruption. So people are still using the word disruption a lot, and yet social scientists over the last couple of years have really undermined Clayton Christensen's notion of disruption and show that it happens far less frequently than he assumed, and that it's far less important for the overall economy than he said. And that's not

leaking into the broader community of users, right. I've noticed that with them things like disruption and stuff like that, and the disruptive innovation, that the theory that that's important they seems to be kind of unfalsifiable because every time there's some counterexample, you're like, oh no, you don't really get the theory that actually like And so it's sort

of hard to pin down what that really means. But if you use his term, I think he had like ninety cases that he thought were case of disruption innovation. When economists re analyze that data, they found that only like seven cases of his ninety cases actually fit. What is it? What is his definition and why does why

do most examples failed to achieve it? I'm not sure in that study what definition they were working with, right, I mean, I think that classic definition of is the introduction of a new process or technology that undermines a traditional industry. One thing I saw a stat last night. I think it was just on Twitter, And so this is like the worst kind of like journalism or punditry, because I'm just mindlessly repeating something I saw it better.

But that something like the percentage of output in the US economy that's done by like the top ten companies is significantly bigger than it was ten or twenty years ago, which sort of undermines this idea that technology is creating

this world. Really, incumbents are always collapsing in fact, you look at the economic landscape and it seems to be dominated by incumbents that are harder and harder to remove from their perch or even look at something like a lot of people have talked about this that if you look at say the app store on your iPhone, the top twenty five apps, almost everyone is either from Facebook,

Google or Amazon. There's actually and most the apps have like one download or zero down right, and there's actually very little churn of who's who's leading at the very top. Well, I mean, I think that this part of what we're trying to do with our Maintainers project. We're having the second conference in April at Stevens, because we're just trying to find more realistic and grounded ways of thinking about

the economy and technology. Right, So the kind of factoid you just threw out there is exactly the kind of thing we would point to and say, look at where rhetoric is pushing us and thinking about the economy, and then look at how the things are actually playing out on the ground. So, in a sort of conclusion, what do you let's talk about some goals. I mean, you mentioned that like exploring the gap between our rhetoric and

what's actually happening. But what are a few things that you'd like everyone to be thinking about and uh going forward with this discussion because I think, ink, you know, this is so novel, this idea to question the cult of this that at this point you just want to have the discussion about it. But what are some big things that you'd really like people to be thinking about specifically to reground the discussion in a more in a

productive way. I mean, so right, I mean, I think the goal is to get people to think about what technology is and what what it's doing in their lives. So most of the technologies around us are very old, you know. We can think of like box fans, which have been around for a century and haven't changed. I assembled a fan, uh the other day, and I was pretty proud of myself because I'm not much of an assembler. But I actually say so, I just want I just

want to get that in there for the record. So I think it's about thinking thinking about technology in a grounded way, remember reminding ourselves what it is, and then reminding ourselves that what most people do in our society is just keep this world going, feeding ourselves, feeding each other, making sure things don't fall down on us. And yes, innovation is important for the technological world around us, but it doesn't play as big of a role as kind

of hypemongers want us to believe. Well, leave Insel, Professor at the Steven's Institute of Technology. Thank you very much for coming in. Thank you for having me forward to your conferences coming up next spring. Yeah, that's right. What's it called the maintainers too? Great? Well, we'll check it out and um maybe we'll maybe I'll come down for it. That sounds to send someone down and uh again, thank you very much for coming in. Thank you very much

for having me. Uh so, Tracy, do you think I totally abused my position by having one of my just bringing one of my old middle school friends in. Yeah. Nepotism. Nepotism right here. No, that that was totally interesting and well worth a discussion and very as you said, very very counterintuitive to the way that most people think about technology. Um, but I expect it it might not be forever. Right. You are seeing more people talking about the potential negative

effects of rapid technological change. Um, it's impact on productivity as you mentioned, and also deflation. So who knows maybe more people will come around to this view in the future. Yeah. And one thing that you said, you said it's not intuitive, and I agree. But you think back to even the people that we celebrate in sort of the era of innovation, like after the sixties when we first started talking about it.

I mean, I don't know exactly what was in Mark Zuckerberg's head when he founded Facebook, but I doubt it was him saying, oh, I want to be an innovator and I want to be uh, I want to innovate. It was like, oh, I want to create this cool thing to uh, you know, meet people at my college or uh, meet girls. I think it was specifically where Steve Jobs wanted to simplified a phone whatever it is.

It does. None of these people that we revere as great innovators probably were really excited about innovation itself as a end. It was they were excited about some project they were working on, and they were not the product of you know, I want to I want to be an innovator. I totally agree with that, But do you think, like, were they excited about being maintainers like to use these were Like, I don't think that was it either. I think we have to find culturally maybe a middle ground

between innovation and maintenance. No, I think that's right. They none of those folks seem like they wanted to be maintainers. But it would be nice, as you say, if there if we could have a world for both where we obviously we celebrate the people who make inventions that change our lives and the sort of the energy that that takes, while also recognizing that most of the good things we have in life are the product of people were entirelessly

to maintain our systems in in functional order. I like that. That's well said. I mean I will just one last thing I will say the next time, next time we get a press release that contains both the words innovation and disruption, I'm going to email a link to this podcast. Well. On that note, this has been another edition of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me on Twitter at The Stalwart. I'm Tracy Alloway. I'm on Twitter at Tracy Alloway. You can follow thee at sts

Underscore News. Thanks for listening. But knowledge to work and grow your business with c i T. From transportation to healthcare to manufacturing. C i T offers commercial lending, leasing, and treasury management services for small and middle market businesses. Learn more at c I T dot com Put knowledge to work.