Clayton Christensen Quotes
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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.
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I had a horrible heart attack and still have symptoms of that sometimes. Then cancer, which is in remission. But the stroke is the hardest thing because I just lost my ability to speak and to write.
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I'd been raised Mormon, but there comes a time where you are not following what you've been taught, but discovering for yourself if it's true.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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In a healthy economy, empowering, sustaining and efficiency innovations operate in balance. A healthy economy creates and sustains more jobs before squeezing out inefficiencies.
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There are direct paths to a successful career. But there are plenty of indirect paths, too.
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The financial doctrines so zealously followed by American companies might help optimize capital when it is scarce. But capital is abundant. If we are to see our economy really grow, we need to encourage migratory capital to become productive capital - capital invested for the long-term in empowering innovations.
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For 300 years, higher education was not disruptable because there was no technological core.
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The concept of disruption is about competitive response; it is not a theory of growth. It's adjacent to growth. But it's not about growth.
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India's prosperity is sectioned by geography, such as in Bangalore, where the information technology industry is prominent. Because they have a conduit out of India, competing in the world by the Internet, it's not regulated in corrupt ways, and it is very prosperous.
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Holiday Inn comes in at the bottom of the market, but they can't go upmarket except if they emulate the Four Seasons. So they can go up, but they have to emulate the people they're trying to compete against. They can't disrupt them, because there isn't anything about their model that is extendable upmarket.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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When you improve your product so it does the customer's job better, then you gain market share.
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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.
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This is why I belong, and why I believe. I commend to all this same search for happiness and for the truth.
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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.
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The only way all people can have the opportunity to choose or reject the gospel of Jesus Christ is for us, without judgment, to invite them to follow the Savior.
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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.