The dictionary meaning of disruption is the disturbance that interrupt an event, activity, or process. Some other meanings are the disarray, interruption, discontinuation, stoppage, impeding, hampering, holding up, delaying, retardation, etc. Merriam Webster dictionary describes disruption as something that causes inability for its continuation in the normal way.
However, nothing is immune to disruption. Because of this reason, disruption can be used both for positive and negative effects. In other words, disruptions can be manipulated to have a desirable correlation with effect-variables.
In science, a wave is viewed as a disturbance moving in a medium to transmit disturbance from one place to another. By manipulating disturbance both intensity and its range can change.
In different areas of knowledge, qualifying words are used with 'disruption' such as visual disruption, media disruption, laser disruption, etc. In many disciplines 'disruptive' is used as a qualifying word with other events, activities and processes in an innovative way such as disruptive visual, disruptive laser, disruptive media, etc.
The qualifying word disruptive was used with innovation in business studies and practices by Clayton Christensen in 1990s to become a buzzword in business and management studies. The coined word 'disruptive innovation' and studies around it resulted into propounding of 'disruptive innovation theory' that describes the principles and processes in which a smaller and incumbent business enterprise innovates and reforms the processes and products from scratch and to move up-market to cause disruption in mainstream business.
The 'disruptive innovation theory' is is being used pedagogy, science, technology, business, management, services, etc., to provide alternatives to the established mainstream high-end enterprises. In the present times, COVID-19 has disruptive the normal life requiring disruptive innovation to come out with new normal that are viable.
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