It is a company's customers who effectively control what it can and cannot do. — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
Companies, in fact, are specifically organized to under-invest in disruptive innovations! This is one reason why we often suggest that companies set… — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
The transformation at the corporate level was achieved by selling off business units in old markets and by creating new business units… — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
One of the factors that make great companies so great is that they have processes that allow them to solve difficult problems… — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
There's usually some process by which a potentially great idea gets prostituted into something lacklustre, or by which the wrong idea gets… — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
There is no evidence that success in business will make us happy people or allow us to have happy families. — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
The paradox explored in my book 'The Innovator's Dilemma' is that successful companies can fail by making the 'right' decisions in the… — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
Generally, the technology that enables disruption is developed in the companies that are the practitioners of the original technology. That's where the… — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
Government mandates, incidentally, are likely to distort rather than solve the problem of finding a market. I would, therefore, force my organization… — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
Most companies think of disruption as a threat. But disruptive innovations have tremendous growth potential. If incumbent companies can learn how to… — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
Businesses want to think in terms of categories. Consumers want us to think in terms of their needs. — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
The innovations are far more important because the technology itself has now way to impact the world for good until it's embedded… — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
While I wouldn't say that most entrepreneurs find it easy to get funding, there are certainly more people out there funding technology… — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
If you study the root causes of business disasters, over and over you'll find this predisposition toward endeavors that offer immediate gratification. — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
In general, the questions that are on our mind are the same questions that have been driving our work over the past… — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
Another thing I've observed is how critical the role of the CEO is when a technology truly is disruptive. In looking back… — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
Decide what you stand for. And then stand for it all the time. — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
No idea for a new growth business ever comes fully shaped. When it emerges, it's half-baked, and it then goes through a… — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
In my first career I had founded my own company, with a group of MIT professors, before coming to Harvard to finish… — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
The reason why it is so difficult for existing firms to capitalize on disruptive innovations is that their processes and their business… — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
If a company truly wants to resolve the innovator's dilemma, it does need to be able to create wave after wave of… — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
It's like in biological evolution: The population will evolve, even though individuals can't. The same thing happens in the corporate world: The… — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
The whole enterprise of teaching managers is steeped in the ethic of data-driven analytical support. The problem is, the data is only… — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
Breaking an old business model is always going to require leaders to follow their instinct. There will always be persuasive reasons not… — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
Every disruptive innovation is powered by a simplifying technology, and then the technology has to get embedded in a different kind of… — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
But actually theory is very practical. Gravity is a theory, for example. It allows you to predict that if you step off a cliff… — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
In our lives and in our careers, whether we are aware of it or not, we are constantly navigating a path by deciding between… — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
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.… — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
People in private equity complain that they have so much capital and so few places to invest. But you have lots of entrepreneurs trying… — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
If you're successful and growing, you can manage any way you want to. Growth makes so many dimensions of management easier. It's when growth… — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
A sustaining innovation makes better products that you can sell for better profits to your best customers. — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
Purpose must be deliberately conceived and chosen, and then pursued. — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
The mistake that makes launching a venture expensive is when you try to make a disruptive technology so good that it can compete on… — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
What you need is a fundamental humility - the belief that you can learn from anyone. — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
This is why I belong, and why I believe. I commend to all this same search for happiness and for the truth. — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
I think this is one reason why the Lord invented the Internet - so members can teach one another how to succeed in assignments… — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
Because these firms listened to their customers, invested aggressively in new technologies that would provide their customers more and better products of the sort… — Clayton Christensen Copy Share Image
