When Tim Berners-Lee created the Web in 1991, it was with the aim of better facilitating scientific communication and the dissemination of scientific research. Put another way, the Web was designed to disrupt scientific publishing. It was not designed to disrupt bookstores, telecommunications, matchmaking services, newspapers, pornography, stock trading, music distribution, or a great many other industries.

And yet it has.

The one thing that one could have reasonably predicted in 1991, however, was that scientific communication—and the publishing industry that supports the dissemination of scientific research—would radically change over the next couple decades.

And yet it has not.

Clarke admits that there have been a number of changes and advancements in the dissemination of and collaboration around scientific data and literature.  However, he rightly points out that these changes have been largely incremental, not disruptive.  For Clarke, the question is ‘why hasn’t scientific publishing been disrupted already?’  Clarke’s bottom line: the incentives held by the scientific community that developed as a result of journal publication do not lend themselves to being disrupted by technological change.

Over time, scientific journals developed three additional functions that became critical for the scientific community: validation (basically, the peer-review process that validates the work of an author), filtration (journals and the peer-review/editorial process work to make information consumption more manageable and to create signals that confer value upon the articles appearing in the highest regarded publications), and designation (scientists professional development and advancement has become tied in a significant fashion to their publication record–specifically, the degree to which their work has been published in the most prestigious journals–basically, institutions rely on the signals provided by the filtration process mentioned above).

Clarke laments:

Peer review is not going to be substantively disrupted by new technology (indeed, nearly every STM publisher employs an online submission and peer-review system already). Filtration may be improved by technology, but such improvements are likely to take the form of augmentative, not disruptive, developments. Designation is firmly rooted in the culture of science and is also not prone to technology-driven disruption. Article-level metrics would first have to become widely adopted, standardized, and accepted, before any such transition could be contemplated—and even then, given the amount of time that would be required to transition to a new system, any change would likely be incremental rather than disruptive.

Given these 3 deeply entrenched cultural functions, I do not think that scientific publishing will be disrupted anytime in the foreseeable future.

It struck me that this is a great lesson for any business that is looking to disrupt an established market through the introduction of a new technology.  We live in an era where disruption through technological advancement seems particularly easy (cost of development is low, barriers to entry have been lowered due to previous technological and cultural shifts, etc).  However, we must take into account the various incentives that have been built up over time that influence how people behave and whether simply introducing a new (likely, superior) technology will be enough to alter the dominant practices in a given industry or sector.  Any research done into the market prior to entry should include a series of interviews with likely adopters and must go far beyond questions that simply relate to the product (e.g. “Would this be a more efficient way of disseminating your scholarly work?”  “Why, yes, it would be.”).  How are individuals in this area goaled?  How do they advance internally and in the wider market professionally?  What factors influence someone’s professional reputation?  Often times these questions are overlooked in favor of a strictly technological and functional perspective.  Even the best technology in the world can be underutilized or even ignored if they ignore the powerful incentives beyond efficiency that can influence adopters.

(Via Nate Torkington at O’Reilly Radar)

Jeff Bezos is trying to do to book publishers what Steve Jobs of Apple did to the music industry. With its iPod and iTunes Store, Apple carved out a largely virgin market so fast that it was able to wrest control of the digital-music distribution system and thus dictate what the record labels could do. With Amazon jamming (its latest earnings are sky-high even as other online retailers are in a state of malaise), Bezos may sense similar opportunity, a moment when he, in true Jobs-like fashion, could colonize this growing niche for the Amazon ecosystem. Should that happen, book publishers would have more to fear than just being squeezed. Amazon could phase them out completely, treating them as the ultimate middlemen orphaned by a new technology.

Essentially, Amazon is looking to bypass traditional publishers through its massive electronic distribution channels (Amazon.com and the Kindle device) as well as its on-demand publishing technology.  Rather than dealing with the publishers, Amazon could strike deals with the largest authors (those that provide the bulk of the revenues from ‘hits’ that traditional publishers require to keep operating) by offering wider distribution and increased royalties.  This could fundamentally alter the publishing industry, if not destroy its current incarnation.

While this is interesting, there is another part of the article that deserves attention: the risk Amazon could face down the road from Apple.

Amazon is faced with a dilemma. While they expend countless resources to create a high-demand e-book market (creating larger consumer demand, testing various designs and functionality in terms of the reading device with those consumers, etc.), Amazon will bear the brunt of creating this massive new market. Ideally, the investment pays off as Amazon then dominates that newly created market. However, the article points out that there could be a disruptive competitor waiting in the wings to take advantage of that market: Apple.

The article speculates that Apple could very well launch an e-reader of its own, one that vastly improves on Amazon’s market-leading Kindle. Specifically, Apple could develop a reader that utilizes their leading touchscreen technology so that readers can intuitively flip through pages of magazines or books (a feature the Kindle currently lacks), develop their reader so that media is presented in color (the Kindle is gray scale), and provide a larger viewing screen. And while Steve Jobs has previously denied a desire to get into the e-reader market, Apple is apparently full-go towards developing and launching their own tablet computer. Such a device could be a “Kindle-killer”.

Apple has made a name for itself as a disruptive innovator, most recently shaking up the digital music player and music industry with the iPod and iTunes as well the cellular market with the iPhone. In both cases, Apple didn’t attack and steal market share at the low end of the market (as Christensen suggests). Rather, they attacked the market with high-performing products set at market-leading price points. In the case of iTunes, Apple did manage to keep prices quite low ($0.99 per song), but the iPhone was a high-priced and high-performing digital music player. With the release of their tablet and a built-in e-reader, Apple would again be attacking a market from the high-end.

Is this unique to Apple? Are they a “luxury disruptor”? They’ve seemingly developed an infrastructure and design team that allows them to pivot into new markets with high-end products and to extract high-prices despite the existence of lower-priced, established competitors. I am wondering if this is replicable, or if Apple is simply an outlier when it comes to innovation and execution.

Curious as to readers’ thoughts.