Clayton Christensen

Each of our children

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

One reason there are

One reason there are so many short-lived management fads is that their prescriptions were derived and advocated in precisely this way. So managers read about a fad and try it, find that it doesn’t work, abandon the effort, and move on to the next thing. In reality, it is usually the case that the faddish … Read more

Year after year after

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

I’ve concluded that getting

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. Clayton Christensen

The transformation at the

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

How could Digital’s collapse

How could Digital’s collapse be so precipitous? It’s because, in many ways, financial performance data is misleading. As you move up to the top of the market, you’re getting rid of the less profitable products at the low end and adding business with more attractive margins at the high end. The rate of unit volume … Read more

You can invest to

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

I don’t view it

I don’t view it as mystic. I believe that God is our father. He created us. He is powerful because he knows everything. Therefore everything I learn that is true makes me more like my father in heaven. When science seems to contradict religion, then one, the other, or both are wrong, or incomplete. Truth … Read more

To prop up the

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 … Read more

When the functionality of

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 … Read more