Word.ws English Dictionary

creative destruction

creative destruction noun: the process of industrial mutation that continually revolutionizes the economic structure from within.

Noun

creative destruction (uncountable)

  1. The process of industrial mutation that continually revolutionizes the economic structure from within.
    • Like all major industrial advances, the telecomputer is an instrument of creative destruction. All the likely victims are mobilizing to prevent their own destruction. It is unsure how soon the creators will win.1990, George F. Gilder, Life After Television, page 37
    • There may be additional explanations for the acceleration of structural economic change. What counts, however, is the result: Schumpeter’s ‘creative destruction’ – the displacement of old skills, trades and entire industries with their dependent localities, by more efficient new skills, trades and...1994 April 7, Edward Luttwak, “Why Fascism is the Wave of the Future”, in London Review of Books, volume 16, number 07, →ISSN

Examples of creative destruction in a sentence

  • Creative destruction, the term coined by economist Joseph Schumpeter to describe the workings of innovation and technology, justly became a buzzword of the New Economy.2001 June 20, Daniel Gross, “Creative Destruction and the Web”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:
  • New-media thinkers, with their appetite for disintermediation and creative destruction, implicitly endorse and advance this transformation.2014, Astra Taylor, chapter 2, in The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age, Henry Holt and Company, →ISBN:
  • Tech workers know that creative destruction is part and parcel of working in a highly innovative industry.2025 May 24, “The great AI jobs disruption is under way”, in FT Weekend (The FT View section), London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN...

Synonyms of creative destruction

Origin of creative destruction

Calque of German schöpferische Zerstörung, popularized by economist Joseph Schumpeter.

Questions about creative destruction

What does creative destruction mean?
Creative destruction means the process of industrial mutation that continually revolutionizes the economic structure from within.
How do you use creative destruction in a sentence?
Creative destruction, the term coined by economist Joseph Schumpeter to describe the workings of innovation and technology, justly became a buzzword of the New Economy.
What part of speech is creative destruction?
Creative destruction is a noun.

Words near creative destruction in the dictionary

  1. creative block
  2. creative blocks
  3. creative class
  4. creative classes
  5. Creative Commons
  6. creative destruction
  7. creative differences
  8. creative energy
  9. creative nonfiction
  10. creative spelling
  11. creative work

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: creative destruction (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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