You Become What You Disrupt

In October 2007, Jesse Robbins published “You Become What You Disrupt” on O’Reilly Radar, coining a phrase that would become one of his most widely cited principles. Written in advance of the Web 2.0 Summit, the essay asked a deceptively simple question: what happens when a disruptive technology wins?

Robbins used VoIP and Skype as the central example. Services that had started as scrappy, unregulated alternatives to the phone system were reaching a point where their own success made the old disclaimers — “this is not a replacement for your phone line” — untenable. Skype’s terms of service explicitly disclaimed any obligation to provide 911 access. But as VoIP adoption grew, so did the expectation that it should work like the utility it had displaced. Congress was considering the 911 Modernization and Public Safety Act to give VoIP providers the same access to emergency infrastructure as traditional carriers. The disruptor was becoming what it had disrupted.

The essay extended the question beyond telecommunications. Would utility computing services like Amazon EC2 eventually face regulation? What about identity services, or “social utilities” like Facebook? Robbins saw a pattern that would repeat across every platform play: disruption creates opportunity, but success creates obligation. The companies that survive the transition are the ones that recognize this early — and build for the responsibilities of incumbency, not just the advantages of disruption.