Will Competition Find a Way? Disruption, Incumbency and Antitrust

This article revisits the disruption thesis that Clayton Christensen made famous in Silicon Valley, and the comfort it has long offered those who counsel antitrust restraint. Tracing the eco¬nomics from Schumpeter to Aghion and Howitt, Gans separates demand-side from supply-side disruption and argues that, once entrants resolve the uncertainty surrounding a new technology, incumbents can catch up by investing, imitating or acquiring. Where entrants compete, the famil¬iar tools of market defini