Disruption (in peer-reviewed journals and in patents) is on decline, and the authors don't have much of an explanation for it. Read the paper here.
I do love this definition of disruption. Put simply as possible: when a new paper or patent comes along, and everyone stops referencing its predecessors...that's disruption. And it's happening less frequently as years go by.
As a quick aside: this is also a good visualization of what happens when good "scaling practices" exist within an org. When teams invent something new and better, the rest of the org is able to find it, learn it, and start operating in a new way. This happens through hierarchy (up the chain of command and back down) or through networks (across the organization, as it happens), with upsides and downsides to each approach, but it has to happen if the organization is to get better over time.
Here are the things that the research show aren't causes for the slowdown:
