Clayton Christensen Quotes & Sayings

When considering a career move, consider the most important assumptions that have to prove true and how you can swiftly and inexpensively test if they are valid. Also, remain realistic about the path ahead of you. — Clayton Christensen

People who have the drive to achieve spend most of their time on what brings them the most tangible, immediate sense of success. Investments in our family only pay off in the very long term. — Clayton Christensen

Purpose must be deliberately conceived and chosen, and then pursued. — Clayton Christensen

Disruptive technology is a theory. It says this will happen and this is why; it's a statement of cause and effect. In our teaching we have so exalted the virtues of data-driven decision making that in many ways we condemn managers only to be able to take action after the data is clear and the game is over. In many ways a good theory is more accurate than data. It allows you to see into the future more clearly. — Clayton Christensen

A sustaining innovation makes better products that you can sell for better profits to your best customers. — Clayton Christensen

There is no evidence that success in business will make us happy people or allow us to have happy families. — Clayton Christensen

I love my life as a missionary, keeping myself on the front lines. The image in my mind is that God, my general, stands at the door when I go out every morning; and, knowing what the war is like, day after day he gives me his most powerful weapon: his Spirit. For this I am grateful. — Clayton Christensen

The parents of teenagers would love to have a car that won't go very far or go very fast. They could just cruise around the neighborhood, drive it to school, see their friends, plug it in overnight. — Clayton Christensen

I promise my students that if they take the time to figure out their life purpose, they'll look back on it as the most important thing they discovered while at school. If they don't figure it out, they will just sail off without a rudder and get buffeted in the very rough seas of life. — Clayton Christensen

Often they [writers on the study of management] have a point of view based upon intuition and experience. They then offer a cadence of two-paragraph examples carefully selected to "prove" their theory, and then they write "one size fits all" books. The message is, "If you'd do what these companies did, you'd be successful too." — Clayton Christensen

Many of the factors that we think will cause motivation, such as fair pay and a good manager, won't make you love your job. Even if you eliminate what makes you dissatisfied, that doesn't make you motivated. It doesn't make your work rewarding. You just are less bothered by things. — Clayton Christensen

I've concluded that the metric by which God will assess my life isn't dollars, but the individual people whose lives I've touched. I think that's the way it will work for us all. Don't worry about the level of individual prominence you have achieved; worry about the individuals you have helped become better people. — Clayton Christensen

People under-invest in family because it doesn't pay off until the long term. — Clayton Christensen

The process of writing 'The Innovator's Dilemma' entailed the developing a new theory. My colleagues, students and I have been improving that theory, and adding others to it, since that time. — Clayton Christensen

What you need is a fundamental humility - the belief that you can learn from anyone. — Clayton Christensen

Inviting others to help us with our work in the Church helps them feel needed and helps them feel the Spirit. When these feelings come, many people often then realize that something has been missing from their lives. — Clayton Christensen

And if your attitude is that only smarter people have something to teach you, your learning opportunities will be very limited ... When we see people acting in an abusive, arrogant, or demeaning manner toward others, their behavior almost always is a symptom of their lack of self-esteem. They need to put someone else down to feel good about themselves. — Clayton Christensen

Because these firms listened to their customers, invested aggressively in new technologies that would provide their customers more and better products of the sort they wanted, and because they carefully studied market trends and systematically allocated investment capital to innovations that promised the best returns, they lost their positions of leadership. — Clayton Christensen

Management has to provide the coordinating mechanism between what the supplier provides and what the user needs in not-good-enough situations where product architecture is consequently interdependent. Management always beats markets when there is not sufficient information. — Clayton Christensen

Each of our children during their high school years went to 'early morning seminary' - scripture study classes that met in the home of a church member every school day morning from 6:30 until 7:15. — Clayton Christensen

There is no single right answer or path forward, but there is one right way to frame the problem. — Clayton Christensen

Diabetes is a great example whereby, giving the patient the tools, you can manage yourself very well. — Clayton Christensen

The breakthrough innovations come when the tension is greatest and the resources are most limited. That's when people are actually a lot more open to rethinking the fundamental way they do business. — Clayton Christensen

Finding a 'sacrificial lamb' on whom to tag blame for complicated problems is an important instrument in the toolkit of politicians, because it deflects blame for the nation's economic woes away from their own regulatory lapses, economic mismanagement and coddling to labor unions. — Clayton Christensen

When the functionality of a product or service overshoots what customers can use, it changes the way companies have to compete. When the product isn't yet good enough, the way you compete is by making better products. In order to make better products, the architecture of the product has to be interdependent and proprietary in character. — Clayton Christensen

During the early stages of an industry, when the functionality and reliability of a product isn't yet adequate to meet customer's needs, a proprietary solution is almost always the right solution - because it allows you to knit all the pieces together in an optimized way. — Clayton Christensen

For online universities, like Liverpool and the University of Phoenix, if prices drop by 60%, they still make money. But for the vast majority of traditional universities, if the prices fall by 10%, they are bankrupt; they have no wriggle room. — Clayton Christensen

Only the general manager can mold the resources, processes, and values that affect innovation , into a coherent capability to develop and launch superior new products and services repeatedly. — Clayton Christensen

If you need a machine and don't buy it, then you will ultimately find that you have paid for it and don't have it. — Clayton Christensen

Focus is scary - until you realize that it only means turning your back on markets you could never have anyway. Sharp focus on jobs that customers are trying to get done holds the promise of greatly improving the odds of success in new-product development. — Clayton Christensen

A lot has been written about the Internet bust. From my point of view, it's quite clear the Internet isn't a category; the Internet is a technological infrastructure that can be deployed to facilitate a disruptive business model or a sustaining business model. — Clayton Christensen

It's like in biological evolution: The population will evolve, even though individuals can't. The same thing happens in the corporate world: The population of business units within corporations evolves, even though individual business units can't. That's because the capabilities of business units reside in their processes and their values, and by their very nature, processes and values are inflexible and meant not to change. — Clayton Christensen

Quite often startups were first out of the gate with a sustaining technology. But somehow the leaders got the technology and stayed atop their industries. Sometimes they acquired the startup; sometimes they just developed the technology as a follower and used their muscle and mass to win. But they always won. — Clayton Christensen

The answer is the disruptive innovator, an outsider, who creates a product or service for the non-existing consumer in a non-existing market for almost no profit. — Clayton Christensen

When an entrant competitor attacks the low end of any market, the rational reaction of the incumbent firms is to abandon rather than defend it - because the low end is the least profitable of their possible investments. — Clayton Christensen

Children build self-esteem by doing things that are hard and learning what works. — Clayton Christensen

The only useful information about the market will be what I create through expeditions into the market, through testing and probing, trial and error, by selling real products to real people who pay real money. — Clayton Christensen

Smart companies fail because they do everything right. They cater to high-profit-margin customers and ignore the low end of the market, where disruptive innovations emerge from. — Clayton Christensen

When you're thinking about your next product or current product and wondering how to make it different so you don't have competition, understand the job the customer needs to get done. — Clayton Christensen

In organizations, once you articulate how success will be measured, everybody tries to game the system so that they are measured in the best possible way. — Clayton Christensen

Steve Jobs and Apple taught us that profit is not the ultimate goal, but rather a consequence of something greater. — Clayton Christensen

The way I ought to measure my life is in terms of the others I helped to become better and happier people. That's the biggest thing to think about if you're not happy. — Clayton Christensen

Life is an unending stream of extenuating circumstances. — Clayton Christensen

The Republicans are wrong in thinking that the rich create jobs. In reality, many of the richest Americans have been investing in efficiency innovations rather than to create jobs. And the Democrats are wrong, because growth won't happen if they distribute the wealth of the wealthy to everyone else. — Clayton Christensen

Understanding motivation is one of the most important things we can do in our lives, because it has such a bearing on why we do the things we do and whether we enjoy them or not. — Clayton Christensen

You can invest to create the new growth business while the core business is still growing, because new business units don't need to get big fast. But when the core business stops growing, investing to create new growth businesses becomes impossible. — Clayton Christensen

Breaking an old business model is always going to require leaders to follow their instinct. There will always be persuasive reasons not to take a risk. But if you only do what worked in the past, you will wake up one day and find that you've been passed by. — Clayton Christensen

Innovation almost always is not successful the first time out. You try something, and it doesn't work, and it takes confidence to say we haven't failed yet ... Ultimately, you become commercially successful. — Clayton Christensen

If you make that decision, that you'll always follow that rule, then your commitment to do it sinks into your heart, and when you realize the benefits of having integrity time after time, it really changes your heart, not just your head. — Clayton Christensen

This is why I belong, and why I believe. I commend to all this same search for happiness and for the truth. — Clayton Christensen

I'm an optimistic person. — Clayton Christensen

The key is not to figure out what the best people are doing and try to emulate it - rather, figure out what causes people and companies to be successful. — Clayton Christensen

Government mandates, incidentally, are likely to distort rather than solve the problem of finding a market. I would, therefore, force my organization to live by its wits rather than to rely on capricious subsidies or non-economic-based regulation to fuel my business. — Clayton Christensen

Management is the opportunity to help people become better people. Practiced that way, it's a magnificent profession. — Clayton Christensen

You can't find returns in investments you haven't made. — Clayton Christensen

Whenever we have thanked these men and women for what they have done for us, without exception they have expressed gratitude for having the chance to help - because they grew as they served. — Clayton Christensen

To prop up the stock price, managers have to turn down the screws on everybody. That forces them to cancel all the projects that would lead to future growth in order to drop money to the bottom line. This is HP's dilemma today. Once a company's growth has stopped, the game as we have known it is over. It's a scary thing. — Clayton Christensen

Managers are already voracious consumers of theory. Every time they make a decision or take action, it's based on some theory that leads them to believe that action will lead to the right result. The problem is, most managers aren't aware of the theories they're using, and they often use the wrong theories for the situation. — Clayton Christensen

Management is the most noble of professions if it's practiced well, — Clayton Christensen

If we are to develop profound theory to solve the intractable problems in our societally-critical domains ... we must learn to crawl into the life of what makes people tick. — Clayton Christensen

In an environment where you've got to push innovations out the door fast and keep the cost of innovation low, the probability that you'll be successful is actually much higher. — Clayton Christensen

The first two lessons, which we learned early in our efforts to be good member missionaries, have made sharing the Gospel much easier: We simply can't predict who will or won't be interested in the Gospel, and building a friendship is not a prerequisite to inviting people to learn about the Gospel. — Clayton Christensen

While I wouldn't say that most entrepreneurs find it easy to get funding, there are certainly more people out there funding technology and healthcare companies than in other areas. — Clayton Christensen

When product performance outstrips the ability of customers to use that performance in an industry, the competitive game changes. Under those circumstances you have to decouple components businesses from assembly businesses. — Clayton Christensen

The mistake that makes launching a venture expensive is when you try to make a disruptive technology so good that it can compete on a quality basis with an established product. — Clayton Christensen

It is a company's customers who effectively control what it can and cannot do. — Clayton Christensen

The ability to share the Gospel isn't a 'gift' that has been given to only a few Latter-day Saints and denied to the rest. — Clayton Christensen

Growth makes management easier. In particular, it makes making labor concessions seem easy. It's when growth stops because you're being disrupted that managing becomes really, really hard, and as a result, most disrupted companies simply disappear. — Clayton Christensen

A great book seeks to explain causality, not correlation. It works to point out the circumstances in which it works, and where it doesn't. And in so doing, it is broadly applicable. — Clayton Christensen

Having a loving relationship with our spouse or with our children is what leads to the long-term happiness we all seek. — Clayton Christensen

Management is getting people together to figure out how to transform inputs into outputs. In the process of figuring out the process of how people work together, you've got to figure out who's got what responsibilities, and how do they work together. — Clayton Christensen

Innovation simply isn't as unpredictable as many people think. There isn't a cookbook yet, but we're getting there. — Clayton Christensen

People in private equity complain that they have so much capital and so few places to invest. But you have lots of entrepreneurs trying to raise money at the low end and find that they can't get funding because of this mismatch. I think that there is an opportunity there. — Clayton Christensen

Efficiency innovations provide return on investment in 12-18 months. Empowering innovations take 5-10 years to yield a return. We have ample capital - oceans of capital - that is being reinvested into efficiency innovation. — Clayton Christensen

There are companies trying to build business within Saudi Arabia, and what they find is that if they try to bring on locals and teach them how to become senior executives, they just don't show up to work. They are not predictable as to when they'll come in and how much of their hearts are into that opportunity. — Clayton Christensen

It's easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time. — Clayton Christensen

How can you make sense of the future when you only have data about the past? — Clayton Christensen

Another thing I've observed is how critical the role of the CEO is when a technology truly is disruptive. In looking back on companies that have successfully launched independent disruptive business units, the CEO always had a foot in both camps. Never have they succeeded when they spin something off in order to get it off the CEO's agenda. The CEOs that did this had extraordinary personal self-confidence, and almost always they were the founders of the companies. — Clayton Christensen

Companies, in fact, are specifically organized to under-invest in disruptive innovations! This is one reason why we often suggest that companies set up separate teams or groups to commercialize disruptive innovations. When disruptive innovations have to fight with other innovations for resources, they tend to lose out. — Clayton Christensen

You may hate gravity, but gravity doesn't care. — Clayton Christensen

There are other dimensions of biotechnology. If you think of biotechnology like the Internet, it's not a category - it's an infrastructure that can be deployed to sustain or disrupt. In health care, the most complex problems at the high end have to be dealt with in a problem-solving mode by the best, most experienced physicians you can find. — Clayton Christensen

Efficiency innovations arise in industries that already exist. They provide existing goods and services at much lower costs. They are not empowering. Efficiency innovators become the low cost providers within an existing framework. — Clayton Christensen

Venture capital is always wanting to go up market. — Clayton Christensen

Lets take the best of our ideas from Global Drucker Forum, and the best of our language, and then focus and clarify. — Clayton Christensen

The important thing is that over time, scientific progress transforms things that used to have to be dealt with in a problem-solving mode down to the pattern-recognition space; and from pattern recognition into the rules-based mode. This is the mechanism by which less-trained people are enabled to do more sophisticated things. This is always the way disruption happens. It enables a larger population of less-experienced people to do more sophisticated things. — Clayton Christensen

Because we employ no professional preachers, it means that every sermon or lesson in church is given by a regular member - women and men, children and grandparents. — Clayton Christensen

The transformation at the corporate level was achieved by selling off business units in old markets and by creating new business units to pursue the new opportunities. But the individual business units themselves within those transformed corporations were almost inert to change. — Clayton Christensen

I don't have my finger on the pulse of corruption in China, but I think most people on the ground would say that as China was emerging from communism, it was a very regulated society, and therefore, it was very corrupt. But as they have deregulated the economy, there just aren't as many opportunities for people to be corrupt. — Clayton Christensen

If you understand cause and effect, it brings about a set of insights that leads you to a very different place. The knowledge will persuade you that the market isn't organized by customer category or by product category. If you understand the job that consumers need to complete, you can articulate all of the experiences in that job. — Clayton Christensen

Most marketers think there's a concept called a product life cycle. Once you realize that the world is organized by jobs that need to be done, you understand that product life cycles don't exist. — Clayton Christensen

I have continued systematically to study the Book of Mormon and Bible to understand even more deeply what God expects of me and my family while on this earth. — Clayton Christensen

Empowering innovations transform something that is complicated and expensive into something that is so much more simple and affordable that a much larger population can enjoy it. — Clayton Christensen

We have found that companies need to speak a common language because some of the suggested ways to harness disruptive innovation are seemingly counterintuitive. If companies don't have that common language, it is hard for them to come to consensus on a counterintuitive course of action. — Clayton Christensen

Year after year after year, people write books about managing innovation or about leadership, for example, without ever going through the pain of saying, "This kind of leadership will cause this result in these circumstances and a very different result in those circumstances." This is academic malpractice of the worst kind. — Clayton Christensen

We don't hire ministers or priests to teach and care for us. This forces us to teach and care for each other - and in my view, this is the core of Christian living as Christ taught it. — Clayton Christensen

The paradox explored in my book 'The Innovator's Dilemma' is that successful companies can fail by making the 'right' decisions in the wrong situations. — Clayton Christensen

The reason why it is so difficult for existing firms to capitalize on disruptive innovations is that their processes and their business model that make them good at the existing business actually make them bad at competing for the disruption. — Clayton Christensen

Efficiency innovations are a natural part of the economic cycle, but these are the innovations that streamline process and actually reduce the number of available jobs. — Clayton Christensen

Eighty percent of the cases used in the typical MBA program are about successful companies. Students graduate with this notion that 'If I do everything that the people in those cases did, then my organization will grow and be successful, too.' — Clayton Christensen

Businesses want to think in terms of categories. Consumers want us to think in terms of their needs. — Clayton Christensen