The Love-Hate Disruption Test
Gauge whether an idea is truly disruptive by how polarized the reactions are, not how positive.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 3
- Confidence
- 92%
Schillace uses the shape of the reaction curve as a disruption detector. Broad mild interest or indifference means an incremental product. A strongly bimodal reaction — a group that intensely loves it alongside a group that wants it to die in a fire — signals genuine impact and disruption. Whether the thing is ultimately good or bad is a separate question; the polarization itself is the signal.
Origin
Sam Schillace's own diagnostic, drawn from the reception of Writely/Google Docs (passionate early boosters vs. Google executives who wanted it killed) and generalized to examples like ChatGPT.
Core principles
- 01A binary reaction (instant understanding and excitement, or rejection) intensifies the more disruptive the idea is.
- 02The bell curve of modern indifference and mild dislike indicates an incremental, non-disruptive product.
- 03It is not a vote — you can succeed while haters outnumber fans, as long as you never run out of the people who love it.
- 04Good vs. bad is separate from disruptive vs. not; the test only measures disruption.
How to run it
- 1
Watch the distribution of reactions
After exposing the idea, look at how reactions spread. Are most people mildly interested or indifferent, or do they split into intense camps?
Watch out Don't average the reactions — a mean of 'meh' can hide a passionate minority that actually matters.
- 2
Score polarization, not positivity
Treat strong love AND strong hate together as the positive signal. If both extremes are loud and the middle is thin, you likely have something disruptive.
Pro tip Use ChatGPT as the calibration point: 'the entire world is like this is amazing or this is terrible and there's not a whole lot in between'.
- 3
Protect the lovers, ignore the raw count
Keep serving the people who intensely love it even while critics outnumber them. The failure mode is running out of lovers, not being outvoted by haters.
Pro tip Writely had millions of users while Google executives were still telling Schillace it was a stupid idea that should be stopped — he kept going.
Watch out Don't mistake loud opposition for a kill signal; for disruptive ideas heavy pushback is expected and can even be confirming.
In the wild
A small group loved Google Docs more than the founders did (early booster Nat Torkington at O'Reilly), while others 'just wanted it to die in a fire'. For a long time haters outnumbered fans, including senior Google executives.
→ Schillace read the intensity of both camps as proof of impact and kept building; it became a multi-billion-user product.
The world split into 'this is amazing' and 'this is terrible' with little middle ground.
→ Schillace cites it as a very good signifier of a truly impactful, disruptive technology — independent of whether it's good or bad.
Common mistakes
Chasing broad mild approval
A product everyone mildly likes and no one hates is usually incremental and disrupts nothing.
Reading hater-majority as failure
Killing an idea because critics outnumber fans ignores that disruptive ideas routinely start out with the haters ahead.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders and product leaders trying to tell whether an early, controversial product is genuinely disruptive or just noise.
Not ideal for
Optimizing mature products where broad satisfaction and low complaint volume are the actual goal.
From the transcript
“that bation of like love it hate it is really how you have an idea of like whether you have impact in what you're building”
“if you get like the more of the bell curve of like kind of modern indifference and maybe mild like and Mild dislike or what…”
“you look at something like chat TPT where like the entire world is like this is amazing or this is terrible and there's like not…”
“as long as like as long as you don't run out of the people who love it you know that's fine”
From the episode
How to be more innovative
Sam Schillace (Microsoft deputy CTO, creator of Google Docs)