Why it's time to retire 'disruption', Silicon Valley's emptiest buzzword

Can upstarts flip the order of things, or do they become the new status quo? Like most buzzwords, it is little more than chest-thumping

An experienced, well-educated friend of mine has been looking for a job for close to six months, and I've been helping her with feedback on her CV. Throughout her early 20s she worked for a succession of tech startups and app development incubators that came out of the gate roaring, only to dribble out - and cut staff - in a matter of months, leaving her in the frustrating experience of less than a year's experience with a single firm. Each new position becomes harder for her to land than the last one.

We're brainstorming her applications, and the plan is to call her "agile". She can work in upstart environments, she's eager to learn and can adapt to change. She wants to be part of something that's growing even if there's risk involved, she says, trying to find a positive narrative for herself in her employers' successive failures.