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Clayton Christensen Quotes

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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

“Only the general manager can mold the resources, processes, and values that affect innovation , into a coherent capability to develop and launch superior new products and services repeatedly.”

Values Process Products Resources Innovation Superiors Managers Capability Mold New Products General Manager

Book:Innovation and the General Manager

Source: Innovation and the General Manager

“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

“The only useful information about the market will be what I create through expeditions into the market, through testing and probing, trial and error, by selling real products to real people who pay real money.”

People Real Pay Information Products Errors Trials Selling Testing Trial And Error Expeditions Probing Useful Information

Book:Harvard Business Review Leadership Library: The Executive Collection (12 Books)

Source: Harvard Business Review Leadership Library: The Executive Collection (12 Books)

“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 growth might be tapering off as you pursue these smaller markets, but your margins actually look better. So Wall Street rewards your stock price until you hit the ceiling.”

“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

“Management has to provide the coordinating mechanism between what the supplier provides and what the user needs in not-good-enough situations where product architecture is consequently interdependent. Management always beats markets when there is not sufficient information.”

Needs Enough Situation Information Products Beats Management Architecture Sufficient Good Enough Mechanism Users Not Good Enough Suppliers Coordinating

Author:Clayton Christensen

“It is when the product is not good enough that proprietary integration gives you a competitive edge. You cannot outsource and be competitively successful in this situation. But at the other end, where standard components assembled in standard ways can yield acceptable performance, you must outsource.”

Way Giving Ends Enough Situation Successful Products Standards Performances Edges Yield Good Enough Acceptable Integration Components Not Good Enough

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

“Focus is scary—until you realize that it only means turning your back on markets you could never have anyway. Sharp focus on jobs that customers are trying to get done holds the promise of greatly improving the odds of success in new-product development.”

Trying Mean Done Jobs Realizing Focus Products Development Promise Scary Customers Odds Improving New Products Product Development Turning Your Back

Author:Clayton Christensen

“Watching how customers actually use a product provides much more reliable information than can be gleaned from a verbal interview or a focus group.”

Use Focus Groups Information Products Customers Interviews Focus Groups

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

“The answer is the disruptive innovator, an outsider, who creates a product or service for the non-existing consumer in a non-existing market for almost no profit.”

Answers Products Innovation Profit Consumers Outsiders Innovators Disruptive

Author:Clayton Christensen