In the June 23 issue I'm reading "The Disruption Machine" by Jill LePore; she reviews Clayton M. Christensen's 1997 book The Innovator's Dilemma, and the industry of disruptive innovation it has spawned. Two of his handpicked case studies are Morrison-Knudsen and Time, Inc. He blames MK's embrace of the mass transit business line for destroying the company, when, as I recall, it was the mismanagement and corruption of MK's leader at the time, William Agee. Christensen doesn't mention anything about Agee's infamous mis-leadership of the company.
Time, Inc. failed in its foray into new-media with the Pathfinder portal. I was involved in a company that invested hundreds of thousands into development of a "portal" which is just a glorified web site. Such facades failed because there was little or no content to make it worthwhile to access and navigate through their elaborate and counter-intuitive structures. LePore concludes that disruptive innovation for its own sake is merely a gimmick and I agree with her. I'm all for innovation, but it is not the goal in itself, it is merely a tool.