We are, as culture, obsessed with innovation--as national characteristic, as economic engine, as certain guarantor of national and corporate leadership--if we only find the formula to guarantee it. For Jill Lepore, writing in the New Yorker in June 2014, is more than business imperative, even more than cultural meme. It is of history, 20th-century version of 18th- and 19th-century ideas about progress and evolution. Innovation is how we move forward. 21st-century version of innovation, for Lepore at least, is disruption--a theory of history founded on profound anxiety about financial collapse, apocalyptic fear of global devastation, and shaky evidence. With that last phrase, Lepore takes aim at the author of the theory of disruption, embarking on close, and highly controversial, critique of Clayton Christensen's first book, Innovator's Dilemma. Accusing Christensen of handpicking case studies to match his preconceptions and of ignoring evidence that contradicts his theory, Lepore attempts to systematically debunk the very idea of disruptive innovation. For those who don't have time or access to read Lepore's full 6,000-word article, Slate's Will Oremus offers fair summary of the piece--with small dose of snarky commentary--under the title The New Yorker Thinks Disruptive Innovation is Myth. response to Lepore's pointed analysis--of Christensen's work in Innovator's Dilemma and of the idea of itself--has been remarkably emotional (and often unnecessarily personal) on both sides. Christensen himself responded via short interview with BusinessWeek that fairly vibrates with fury. Richard Feloni, writing for Business Insider, offers overview of the immediate responses, including insightful Twitter posts from Marc Andreesen and Steven Sinofsky (formerly president of Microsoft's Windows division). In post on Bloomberg View, Clive Crook called Lepore's work incompetent. In Forbes, Clark Gilbert described it as cleverly written but substantively lacking and Steve Denning complimented Lepore on her well-crafted sentences but dismissed the larger argument as total nonsense, describing Lepore's reasoning as flights of fancy that are wildly misguided. Lepore's defenders have been similarly extreme, describing the article as an absolutely devastating of disruptive innovation (Jonathan Rees, on his More or Less Bunk blog), and, more moderately, a careful takedown (Paul Krugman, in the New York Times). Haydn Shaughnessy said Lepore had dismantled disruptive innovation, praising her for piercing the elite bubble around Christensen's work. Given this kind of extremism, it's tempting to dismiss the firestorm as another Internet-bred eruption that will subside if ignored. Those actually working in the trenches of innovation, day to day, have little attention to spare for such apparently academic debates. there have been considered responses, on both sides, that deserve attention for the way they invite reconsideration of the concept of and how it shapes the way we think about innovation. Slate writer Will Oremus puts it, in commentary on Christensen's response to Lepore, I'd like to think ... that the whole dustup could have the effect of prodding people to think more carefully about Christensen's theory before spouting the relevant buzzwords. That disruption has become buzzword, taking on so many meanings that it has become essentially meaningless, is one thing both sides agree on. In the BusinessWeek interview in which he responds to Lepore's article, Christensen admits that use of the word has become almost random ... used to justify whatever anybody--an entrepreneur or college student--wants to do. In piece for New York magazine, Kevin Roose goes so far as to suggest we all just stop using the word: But when everything is disruptive, nothing is. use of the term as an all-purpose rhetorical bludgeon, he argues, can distract us from the real issues with emergent products and companies. …