eBay’s Team of Disruptive Innovators

Whenever I hear the term “disruptive innovation” I cringe. Notwithstanding the fact that many would say I cringe too easily, it nevertheless strikes me as term that arose ex post facto to describe a significant change rather than as a creative mandate.
Examples of generally accepted disrupters runs the gamut from the musket ( particularly disruptive if you are on the receiving end) to automobiles, PCs, the web, etc.. eBay can certainly be seen in this disruptive light in that it has profoundly changed the marketplace.

All well and good. But in almost every case I can think of, the disruption or the impact of any particular innovation wasn’t predictable, certainly by the standards of the time in which happened; it is rather only in retrospect that any innovation can be seen as truly revolutionary.

In other words, you just don’t memo all desks and proclaim that by week’s end, we’ll have a genuine, thigh-slapping disruptive innovation to announce….that is, of course, unless you trod among the khaki-klad of eBay’s recently proclaimed “Disruptive Innovation Team”

The Disruptive Innovation team was created with a specific purpose in mind: explore new concepts and create new tools to allow our 222 million buyers, sellers and developers to make better use of the eBay platform.

“…to boldly go where no man has gone before” just cries out to be inserted in right after “explore new concepts and create new tools” doesn’t it?

All in all a very butch attitude that will, I am sure, result in disruptive, tectonic-shifts in the march of civilization.

I feel much the same as you, I’m sure, huddled as we are in our primordial darkness waiting…hoping….praying that the resulting musket from our “team” doesn’t backfire.