Comments on: Is Tagging A Disruptive Innovation?

By: Simon Edhouse

Simon Edhouse — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 14:53:16 +0000

Indeed you could call it a ‘movement’, but in fact I referred to it as being part of a ‘larger disruptive process’… I prefer the latter, because ‘movement’ implies a socially cohesive group and I don’t see that.

If you examine the greatest drivers of growth on the web, myspace,facebook, youtube et al, and then look at applications like messenger, skype, Napster, eDonkey etc looking for common attributes, you will find what Umair Haque calls ‘edge competencies’~ the whirring activity of ordinary people, and tagging is part of that…

Second part of your question, Yes most certainly.

By: joelamantia

joelamantia — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 05:18:20 +0000

What is the larger movement that tagging is part of, as you see it? What other forces are involved?

Do you mean that tagging plus other forces will create a new market, one that then disrupts existing markets?

By: Simon Edhouse

Simon Edhouse — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 13:54:13 +0000

I think its important to recognize that there are many potential disruptive-innovations that will not end up being credited with that illustrious title. In other words they really need to actually ‘disrupt’ something significant to earn that distinction.

Many different technologies, platforms or applications may be ‘potential’ disruptions, but may fall by the wayside, change, or join forces with other forces and be transformed and possibly end up ‘disrupting’. But I think we all know that a real ‘disruptive innovation’ needs to not cause a little disruption, but rather have a seismic affect on industries, in the “IT ecosystem” as Joe noted.

To speculate whether ‘tagging’ by itself is a ‘disruptive innovation’ is, I’m sure, premature. There’s definitely something going on though, isn’t there?

I think ‘tagging’ is part of a larger disruptive process in mid-transition, but it will involve various other forces and like in the case of packet-switching, in the end is likely to lead to a ‘new-market’ disruptive innovation. To quote Clayton Christensen from an article in the Economist (’The Blood of Incumbents’ Oct 28 2004)

“…the packet-switching technology developed by Cisco and others — wasn’t good enough to be used in the voice telecommunications market, so it took root in a less demanding application, data transmission. Little by little, it got better and better and now you can send a voice signal over the Internet. That’s a good example of a (new market) disruptive innovation.”