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Listen to The Closer, Cast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Sarah Green Carmichael. I'm back today

with our editor Amy Bernstein to talk about the December 2015 issue. Amy, thank you

so much for joining us today. Always a pleasure. I want to start with a big new

article in this issue from Clay Christensen, Michael Rayner, and Rory McDonald. This is a look

at disruptive innovation, which is something that other publications have really picked up recently and

been debating. So tell us a little bit about why and how we came back to this topic which

for us has been a really core topic for a long time. Well, we came back for a couple of reasons.

The first is that this is actually the 20th anniversary

of its introduction.

But secondarily, and not to trivialize it it this theory is taking a couple of really big hits in the last year.

Critics attack Clayton Christensen's methodology and other stuff about it and and really what we thought was that part of

the problem is that people don't understand what disruptive innovation is

anymore it is kind of predictable that when a big idea takes hold in the

popular culture it becomes it loses the connection to its roots and its real

meaning and that's what we kind of think happened here.

But the second thing that has happened here is that Clay has updated this theory.

He's actually done it quite a lot and if you've ever sat in a

seminar with Clay, one of the salient qualities of his leadership is that he

seeks feedback on the ideas.

And I've seen this several times, I think you have too.

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