“Using trend data to predict the future] is like driving a car looking only at the rearview mirror—because data is only available about the past. … This is why theory can be so valuable: it can explain what will happen, even before you experience it.” – Clayton M. Christensen, James Allworth, and Karen Dillon, How Will You Measure Your Life?
In 1997, Clayton Christensen was invited by Intel’s chairman, Andy Grove, to present his research on disruptive innovation at Intel’s offices in Santa Clara, California. Grove, short on time, gave Christensen 10 minutes to explain what his research meant for Intel. Christensen replied, “Andy, I can’t because I know very little about Intel. The only thing I can do is to explain the theory first; then we can look at the company through the lens that the theory offers.”
Growing impatient, Grove listened as Christensen explained how disruptive innovation starts with competitors offering low-cost, seemingly inferior products that steadily improve. Then, using the steel industry as an example, Christensen illustrated how this process unfolds. When he finished, Grove said, “I get it. What it means for Intel is…” and proceeded to outline what became Intel’s strategy to target the low end of the market with the Celeron processor.
Reflecting on the exchange, Christensen often noted that if he had tried to tell Grove what to think about the microprocessor business, Grove, with his deep expertise, would have dismantled the argument. Instead, by teaching Grove how to think through the lens of theory, he enabled him to arrive at bold, informed conclusions on his own.
As we step into a new year, some questions loom large: How will AI reshape work and economic opportunities for workers? Will political and social shifts redefine our daily lives? Will trends in education, from absenteeism to low achievement to student wellbeing, hold steady—or will they unravel in unexpected ways? In a world full of uncertainty, there’s a market for bold predictions. But instead of chasing crystal-ball forecasts, I want to offer something more enduring: a way of thinking. By using theory to decode the forces driving change, we can chart a clearer path through the uncertainties of the future.
Disruptive Innovation: A theory for seeing when radical change is on the horizon
Some of the most intriguing and urgent questions we ask about the future revolve around events that upend the institutions we rely on and redefine how we live our lives. These are the big, dramatic shifts—the ones that rewrite the rules. Will artificial intelligence revolutionize the job market? Will it reshape how our children learn and develop relationships? Will the industries and institutions we rely on today be upended by rapid shifts in technology, demographics, or geopolitics?
Sometimes, these seismic shifts seem to come out of nowhere. They’re what Nassim Taleb calls “Black Swan events”—rare, unforeseeable, and massively impactful. Think of the COVID-19 pandemic that disrupted the way we work or the fall of the Berlin Wall that shattered decades of Cold War stability. These events catch us off guard because they lie outside the patterns we recognize, and their unpredictability is what makes them Black Swans.
But not all radical change is so elusive. Some upheavals follow patterns that we can observe, understand, and even anticipate. One such pattern is Disruptive Innovation—a process that explains how new competitors emerge, industries evolve, and incumbents fall. Unlike Black Swan events, Disruptive Innovation doesn’t happen randomly. It follows a predictable process that starts small, often in overlooked places, and gradually redefines what people value until the old way of doing things no longer makes sense.
To help people assess whether an innovation they’re tracking is truly disruptive, we’ve developed six key questions that serve as a litmus test for identifying Disruptive Innovation. You can explore these questions in this blog post: “Is the Innovation Really Disruptive? These 6 Questions Can Reveal the Answer.” [Or download the infographic with these questions here.] With this tool, you can make your own predictions about the disruptive potential of innovations in your industry or area of interest.
But here’s the challenge: not everything that looks revolutionary is truly disruptive. Many people assume that astonishing new technologies like artificial intelligence are clearly on a path to disrupt the world as we know it. But technology itself isn’t inherently disruptive. It’s the business model that gets wrapped around a new technology that ultimately determines its disruptive potential.
Consider AI in education. Most AI tools marketed to schools today don’t fundamentally change how education works. They just make conventional schools more efficient—streamlining teachers’ workflows, reducing administrative burdens, or offering marginal bumps in instructional effectiveness. These are helpful improvements, but they don’t fundamentally change the way education is delivered. They are sustaining innovations to the conventional approach to schooling.
In contrast, disruption occurs when new models emerge to address the needs of people who aren’t served by the existing system or who want something radically different from what the current system offers. For example, Alpha School in San Antonio leverages AI to provide a fundamentally different kind of schooling experience. Alpha’s “business” model doesn’t compete to do everything conventional schools do, but better. Rather, it serves families seeking things that conventional schools don’t prioritize—flexibility, personalization, and a focus on preparing students with practical skills for the future. Rather than bolting AI onto a traditional classroom, Alpha uses technology to enable a mastery-based learning model where students progress at their own pace and are motivated through gamification and real-world problem-solving. By combining AI with mastery-based learning, Alpha is able to cover core academic content in just two hours a day—a level of efficiency that frees up significant time for other valuable learning activities. These include opportunities for students to develop leadership skills, engage in passion projects, practice critical thinking, and tackle real-world challenges that go beyond traditional academics. This is where the disruptive potential of AI lies: in reimagining the model, not just the tools.
If you find yourself skeptical of whether Alpha or schools like it can really transform education, here’s the catch: disruption doesn’t look disruptive at first. New solutions often seem inferior or irrelevant to established players, who dismiss them because they don’t meet conventional expectations. But disruption isn’t a singular event—it’s a process that unfolds over time as solutions on the margins improve, attract more people, and eventually displace the incumbents who ignored them.
By understanding Disruptive Innovation, we gain a powerful tool for anticipating change—not by chasing headlines about the latest technologies, but by looking at where new business models are starting to take root and whom they serve. When we recognize the seeds of disruption, we can see radical change coming before it hits the mainstream.
Jobs to Be Done: A theory for spotting when a trend will go mainstream
Societal trends—whether they involve consumer choices, workplace culture, or political movements—depend on shifts in behavior across populations. So, what makes a change in habit move from the fringes to the mainstream? Why do some ideas spread rapidly while others stall? Jobs to Be Done is a theory that helps us uncover what drives these kinds of changes in behavior across populations.
According to the theory, people “hire” new things when the events in their lives motivate them to solve specific problems or pursue particular goals. Digging into the details, the theory identifies four forces that shape people’s decisions: the push of the situation (the problems or needs that make someone want to change), the pull of the new solution (the allure or benefits of the new option), the anxiety of the new solution (fears about trying something unfamiliar), and the habit of the present (the comfort of sticking with what’s known). Change happens only when the forces that move people toward a solution are strong enough to overcome the forces resisting change. [You can download this graphic here.]
So, what determines whether an emerging trend is just a spark that only reaches a few pocket groups or an ember that ignites a blaze across society? The answer lies in understanding how different people experience particular Jobs to Be Done.
Early adopters are often driven by strong struggling moments. Their frustrations with the status quo or their cravings for something better are so elevated that they’re willing to take risks and make sacrifices to try something new. In education, for example, many of the families currently opting for microschools are tired of butting heads with their kids every morning to get out the door to school because their kids hate school. Others have deep-seated concerns about key aspects of conventional schooling—such as a worry that too much rote instruction stifles their children’s innate talents or their intrinsic curiosity and creativity. For these families, the push of their situation is strong enough to overcome any anxieties or habits that would otherwise keep them tethered to conventional schooling.
But in reality, most people aren’t early adopters. The majority might not be completely satisfied with the status quo, but they aren’t at a point of desperation. Their struggles aren’t intense enough to counteract the comfort of familiar routines or the fear of the unknown.
Thus, for something new to gain mainstream traction, it has to evolve. It must get better at reducing anxieties that make change feel daunting. It must figure out how to fit into people’s lives with minimal interruption to their familiar routines.
Again, consider the microschooling trend. Right now, microschools appeal primarily to early adopters—parents whose struggles and frustrations compel them to find alternatives. But for microschools to go mainstream, they’ll need to get better at addressing the anxieties that hold most families back. Many parents worry about the added effort or expense of transportation, tuition, and after-school care. Others worry that stepping out of the conventional schooling track might limit their child’s college prospects. Additionally, students may fear missing out on extracurricular activities like sports or theater. To address these anxieties, microschools need to offer comparable services by expanding their offerings or partnering with others to provide families with additional services they value. Without these evolutions, microschools will remain niche solutions, serving primarily those whose challenges with conventional schooling outweigh the barriers to change.
These insights from Jobs to Be Done aren’t limited to education. Whether it’s autonomous vehicles, augmented reality glasses, or new norms of corporate culture, understanding the forces that encourage and inhibit changes in behavior can help us identify which emerging trends are actually on track to transform society.
Conclusion
The theory-based approach presented here doesn’t lead to sweeping predictions or headline-grabbing proclamations. Instead, it provides a thoughtful perspective that clarifies the underlying dynamics and dependencies of potential outcomes. By learning and applying theories like Disruptive Innovation and Jobs to Be Done, we can better identify the real drivers of change, anticipate potential roadblocks, and navigate the complexities ahead.
My hope is that after reading this, you feel more empowered to use these theories—not to make flashy predictions but to develop informed and thoughtful perspectives about the future.
