Essays - Benedict Evans

What kind of disruption?

2025-03-14 · 16:31 UTC ·Benedict Evans ·1 min read

Brief

Benedict Evans uses examples (Uber, Airbnb, Skype) and a presentation slide to show disruption varies by regulation, supply and demand—e.g., roughly half of hotel revenue is business travel largely untouched by Airbnb—and forecasts generative AI hitting professional services harder than cement.

Why it matters

Benedict Evans (2025-03-14) argues 'disruption' comes in different forms: Uber redefined taxis and Airbnb redefined hotels, but effects diverge because of regulation, supply differences and demand—roughly half of global hotel revenue is business travel, little of which moved to Airbnb.

Key details

  • Evans notes disruption can create new demand or only affect peripheral businesses (e.g., Skype, online travel booking) and suggests generative AI will be far more disruptive to professional services than to commodity sectors such as cement.
Cleaned source text

title: What kind of disruption?

author: Benedict Evans

content_type: article

publication: Essays - Benedict Evans

published: 2025-03-14T16:31:21

source_url: https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2025/3/14/what-kind-of-disruption

word_count: 327

I made this slide for a presentation I’m giving next week, but I think it’s worth picking up and talking about in its own right.

Everyone knows about ‘disruption’, and it’s pretty common also to talk about redefining markets and ‘software eating the world’, and Airbnb and Uber are the perfect examples. Where previous generations of tech companies sold software to hotels and taxi companies, Airbnb and Uber used software to create new businesses and to redefine markets. Uber changed what we mean when we say ‘taxi’ and Airbnb changed hotels. But for all sorts of reasons, the actual effect of that on the taxi and hotel industries was very different. The regulation is different. The supply of people with a car and few hours to spare is very different from the supply of people with a spare room to rent out (indeed, there is adverse selection in that difference). The delta between waving your hand on a street corner and pressing a button on your phone is different to the delta between booking a hotel room and booking a stranger’s apartment. Roughly half of the global hotel industry is business travel and little or none of that has moved to Airbnb. You can probably think of more… or just look at the slide. You can push this point in different directions. Sometimes disruption is much more about new demand than challenging the existing market, or only affects a peripheral business, as happened with Skype. Everything is probably disruptive to someone - online travel booking was very disruptive to travel agents but (for the sake of argument) didn’t change the fundamentals of the airline business, and generative AI will probably be much more disruptive to (say) professional services companies than the cement business. But in each case, it’s always easier to shout ‘disruption!’ or ‘AI!’ than to ask what kind.