The Technological Jerk Revisited: Why Leaders Fail to Adapt

In early 2020, many leaders were still reflecting on the turn of the millennium and the widely anticipated Y2K disruption. The systems did not fail. The power grids stayed on. Banks did not collapse. Yet, two decades later, entire industries had been quietly reshaped or erased. The disruption that mattered was not technical failure but organisational inability to adapt to a changing environment.

At the time, this disconnect raised an uncomfortable question. Why did so many organisations prepare extensively for the wrong form of disruption while remaining exposed to the one that ultimately mattered? Five years on, the closure of MTV’s international music channels at the end of 2025 provides a contemporary mirror to that earlier reflection. The same pattern has repeated itself, almost intact.

This article revisits that original premise and extends it. It argues that what organisations repeatedly miss is not technology itself, but a phenomenon that can be described as a technological jerk. This occurs when the rate and direction of external technological change exceed an organisation’s capacity to absorb, reorient, and govern that change.

Defining the Technological Jerk

In leadership discourse, disruption is often discussed as a gradual process that can be managed through strategy, investment, and change programmes. The concept of a technological jerk challenges this assumption. A jerk is not gradual. It is a discontinuity that occurs when an organisation has optimised itself for one dominant form of motion, only to find that the environment has shifted to another.

Leaderonomics has frequently used this framing in its leadership analyses, particularly in explaining why capable organisations with strong brands and competent management still fail. The issue is not ignorance of change, but the inability to absorb its implications fast enough. When organisations optimise for physical motion, linear scheduling, or centralised control, they build systems, incentives, and identities that resist alternative forms of motion.

Industry analyses of the Netflix versus Blockbuster case describe this precisely. Blockbuster did not fail because it misunderstood entertainment demand. It failed because it was optimised for physical distribution and store-based economics, while the market shifted decisively toward digital, on-demand access. The jerk occurred at the moment when optimisation became inertia.

Related: How to Mine Better Innovation from the AI Gold Rush

Blockbuster: The Historical Pattern

Blockbuster Video’s 2010 bankruptcy is now a canonical case in management literature. Harvard Business Review and McKinsey analyses consistently describe the company’s failure as one of asset inertia rather than strategic blindness. The organisation was deeply invested in physical stores, inventory logistics, and late-fee driven revenue models. These assets were highly efficient within the old system, yet became liabilities once the dominant mode of consumption changed.

What is often overlooked is that Blockbuster did not collapse overnight. It appeared stable until very late in its decline. Leadership data, customer numbers, and brand recognition remained strong long after the underlying shift had occurred. The technological jerk was not visible through conventional management metrics.

Recent economic commentary has grouped Blockbuster with other legacy brands that technically survived but were functionally erased as cultural gatekeepers. The brand name remained, but its role in discovery and distribution vanished.

MTV 2025: The Contemporary Repeat

The closure of MTV’s international music channels by December 31, 2025 marks a similar moment. Reports from Billboard and Rolling Stone confirm that multiple European music-focused feeds were discontinued due to declining linear viewership and changing consumption habits. Broadband TV News situates the decision within Paramount Global’s broader cost-cutting and restructuring programme following the Skydance merger.

Cultural commentary from the BBC and The Guardian frames the shutdown as the end of an era for music discovery, with former VJs describing the loss of a shared cultural reference point. What these accounts collectively reveal is not a failure of content creation. MTV continued to produce culturally relevant material. The failure lay elsewhere.

MTV was optimised for linear, programmed motion. Music videos were scheduled, curated, and broadcast in cycles designed for a pre-digital audience. By 2025, music discovery had shifted decisively toward algorithmic, on-demand platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, and Spotify. The organisation could see the change, yet could not fully absorb it without dismantling its own operating logic.

The technological jerk occurred when algorithmic motion replaced programmed motion as the dominant form of engagement.

Why Leadership Systems Miss the Jerk

The repetition of this pattern raises a deeper leadership question. Why do organisations fail to learn from previous disruptions, even when the structural similarities are evident?

First, management systems are designed to reward optimisation rather than reorientation. Metrics, incentives, and governance frameworks tend to reinforce existing revenue streams and operational efficiencies. This creates what can be described as revenue addiction, where short-term performance masks long-term vulnerability.

Second, asset investments shape organisational identity. Physical infrastructure, broadcast licences, and legacy platforms become not only financial commitments but symbols of competence and success. Letting go of them requires more than strategic clarity. It requires identity-level change.

Third, leadership attention is often directed toward speed rather than direction. Organisations may accelerate digital initiatives while remaining anchored to outdated assumptions about control, distribution, or audience behaviour. The jerk is missed because leadership focuses on how fast it is moving, not where it is moving from and toward.

The Next Leadership Test: AI and Agency

Artificial intelligence introduces a more demanding version of the same challenge. Unlike previous technological shifts that altered distribution or efficiency, AI increasingly alters agency. It affects who makes decisions, how judgement is delegated, and where accountability resides.

Industry outlooks from PwC and Deloitte show that by 2025, consumer engagement had already shifted toward immersive, short-form, and algorithmically mediated experiences. These shifts are not neutral. They reshape organisational boundaries and leadership responsibility.

The risk for leaders is to treat AI as another optimisation layer rather than recognising it as a structural shift in decision-making authority. In this context, discussions around sovereign AI have emerged, focusing on governance, accountability, and control rather than raw capability. These efforts suggest that the next technological jerk will not be about adoption speed, but about whether organisations can retain coherence as autonomy increases.

Conclusion: Learning to See the Pattern

The closures of Blockbuster’s stores and MTV’s music channels are not isolated failures. They are expressions of a recurring leadership blind spot. The technological jerk is not an anomaly. It is a predictable outcome when organisational absorption capacity lags behind environmental change.

For leaders, the lesson is neither to fear technology nor to chase it indiscriminately. It is to develop the ability to recognise when optimisation has turned into inertia and when governance frameworks must evolve ahead of scale. The organisations that endure will not be those with the fastest tools, but those with the leadership capacity to remain aligned as the nature of motion, agency, and control continues to shift.

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Just as the Technology Jerk redefined media and led to the fall of giants like MTV, it is currently redefining leadership. Mohsin Memon has spent 20 years helping C-suite leaders at Fortune 500 companies survive these jarring transitions. Through his AFERR methodology and research-driven insights, Mohsin equips you with the mindset and tools to stay future-ready.

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