Clayton Christensen
Clayton Christensen
Clayton M. Christensenis an American scholar, educator, author, business consultant, and religious leader who currently serves as the Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, having a joint appointment in the Technology & Operations Management and General Management faculty groups. He is best known for his study of innovation in commercial enterprises. His first book, The Innovator's Dilemma, articulated his theory of disruptive innovation. Christensen is also a co-founder of Rose Park Advisors, a venture...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBusinessman
Date of Birth6 April 1952
CountryUnited States of America
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.
I've concluded that getting the categories right is an absolutely crucial step to building useful management theory, and unfortunately too few writers do this. You've got to engage in serious scholarship, and then figure out how to write it in a way that lots of people can understand.
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."
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.
Universities think people come up with great ideas by closing the door. The academic tenure process, where you have to publish to journals which are very narrow, stands in the way of great research.
What the purpose of my life is about is I want to become the kind of person that God wants me to become, and through my study of the scriptures, I can articulate the kind of person that God would be happy if I become.
Venture capital is always wanting to go up market.
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.
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.
Participants of this workshop are living in their own silos and need to come to a consensus on the business model that will drive the semiconductor industry going forward.
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.
Management teams aren't good at asking questions. In business school, we train them to be good at giving answers.
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.
Optimizing return on capital will generate less growth than optimizing return on education.