The web has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to evolve and leave embedded franchises struggling or in the dirt.    Prodigy, AOL were early candidates.   Today Yahoo and Ebay are struggling, and I think Google is tipping down the same path.    This cycle of creative destruction — more recently framed as the innovators dilemma — is both fascinating and hugely dislocating for businesses.    To see this immense franchises melt before your very eyes — is hard to say the least.   I saw it up close at AOL.    I remember back in 2000, just after the new organizational structure for AOL / Time Warner was announced there was a three day HBS training program for 80 or so of us at AOL.   I loath these HR programs — but this one was amazing.   I remember Kotter as great (fascinating set of videos on leadership, wish I had them recorded), Colin Powell was amazing and then on the second morning Clay Christensen spoke to the group.    He is an imposing figure, tall as heck, and a great speaker — he walked through his theory of the innovators dilemma, illustrated it with supporting case studies and then asked us where disruption was going to come from for AOL?    Barry Schuler — who was taking over from Pittman as CEO of AOL jumped to answer.   He explained that AOL was a disruptive company by its nature.    That AOL had disruption in its DNA and so AOL would continue to disrupt other businesses and as the disruptor its fate would be different.     It was an interesting argument — heart felt and in the early days of the Internet cycle it seemed credible.   The Internet leaders would have the creative DNA and organizational fortitude to withstand further cycles of disruption.    Christensen didn’t buy it.     He said time and time again disruptive business confuse adjacent innovation for disruptive innovation.   They think they are still disrupting when they are just innovating on the same theme that they began with.   As a consequence they miss the grass roots challenger — the real disruptor to their business.   The company who is disrupting their business doesn’t look relevant to the billion dollar franchise, its often scrappy and unpolished, it looks like a sideline business, and often its business model is TBD.    With the AOL story now unraveled — I now see search as fragmenting and Twitter search doing to Google what broadband did to AOL….

(full post with links and images)