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Clayton Christensen Quotes

Professor

Clayton M. Christensen is an esteemed professor known for his contributions to the fields of business management and innovation. Born on April 6, 1952, he is a professor at Harvard Business School and the author of 'The Innovator's Dilemma'.

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Famous Clayton Christensen Quotes

“Core competence, as it is used by many managers, is a dangerously inward-looking notion. Competitiveness is far more about doing what customers value than doing what you think you're good at.”

Thinking Used Values Notion Customers Core Managers Inward Competence Competitiveness

Author:Clayton Christensen

“It is a company's customers who effectively control what it can and cannot do.”

Company Customers

Book:Disruptive Innovation: The Christensen Collection (The Innovator's Dilemma, The Innovator's Solution, The Innovator's DNA, and Harvard Business Review article

Source: Disruptive Innovation: The Christensen Collection (The Innovator's Dilemma, The Innovator's Solution, The Innovator's DNA, and Harvard Business Review article

“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.”

Wanted Lost Technology Position Products Return Innovation Investment Customers Firm Trends New Technology

Book:The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail

Source: The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail

“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.”

Way Enough Character Use Order Company Products Customers Architecture Good Enough Functionality

Author: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.”

Use Games Ability Products Industry Circumstances Performances Customers Components Assembly

Author:Clayton Christensen

“Because of the disruption phenomenon - technological progress outstripping the ability of customers to utilize it - the general tendency is for the money to migrate toward the subsystems.”

Ability Progress Customers Tendencies Phenomenon Technological Disruption Technological Progress Migrate