(2023-03-23) Zitron Disruption Killed Innovation

Ed Zitron: Disruption Killed Innovation. The reason that none of these products seem to ever have a firm connection to any real use case or product is that these announcements are not for customers. Mark Benioff’s 2019 announcement of “full blockchain” (for Salesforce.com) coincided with a brief bull run in cryptocurrency.

And Benioff’s new push into the nebulous world of adding AI to a CRM for the fourth or fifth time is likely to placate a push by activist investor Elliott Management and to try and stabilize a stock that has dropped from $210 to $167 in the last year.

I believe that Musk has realized that the markets don’t care about innovation - they care about disruption. The two terms may seem synonymous, but they’re fundamentally different. One refers to actual technological advancement, whereas the other refers to the appearance of innovation, whether it exists or doesn’t.

The market doesn’t want companies to change the world or take huge risks - they want to see you grow eternally rather than create a new way to do something

Roblox - an online game for children launched in 2006 that went public in 2021 - rode the hype of the metaverse to an all-time high of over $130 a share based entirely on another company (Meta) saying that online worlds were important. Did it matter that Roblox has never lost less than $70 million a quarter, or that it’s a fundamentally unsafe and exploitative environment for kids? No.

The grim reality is that innovation is expensive, and the money has to come from somewhere. Venture capital prefers disruption because it allows them to own chunks of new markets

The market doesn’t value stability, or people, or even real actual innovation. It cherishes growth and “disruption,” and it rewards companies that deliver on those points — or, in the case of Tesla, just pretend to.