Home / Quotes / Quote by Clayton Christensen

Quote by Clayton Christensen

“When a technology, regardless of how different and difficult it is, sustains the trajectory of performance improvement, my research asserts that the leaders in the prior generation of technology are likely to end up on top of their industry at the end of the transition.”

Quote by Clayton Christensen

Author

Clayton Christensen

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'. more

You May Also Like

“Quite often startups were first out of the gate with a sustaining technology. But somehow the leaders got the technology and stayed atop their industries. Sometimes they acquired the startup; sometimes they just developed the technology as a follower and used their muscle and mass to win. But they always won.”

Firsts Sometimes Used Winning Leader Technology Industry Mass Muscles Gates Followers Sustaining

Author:Clayton Christensen

“If the technology is disruptive, on the other hand, the odds are that at the end of the transition, the leaders will have been toppled and new companies will be on top.”

Ifs Has Beens Ends Hands Company Leader Technology Transition Odds Disruptive New Company

Author:Clayton Christensen

“In most instances, biotechnology, though a radically different approach, is a sustaining technology: It's a dramatically improved way of targeting problems that we hadn't been able to solve with the conventional approach of mainstream pharmaceutical companies.”

Way Different Problem Able Company Technology Approach Solve Instance Mainstream Conventional Sustaining Pharmaceutical Different Approach Biotechnology Pharmaceutical Companies

Author:Clayton Christensen

“There are other dimensions of biotechnology. If you think of biotechnology like the Internet, it's not a category - it's an infrastructure that can be deployed to sustain or disrupt. In health care, the most complex problems at the high end have to be dealt with in a problem-solving mode by the best, most experienced physicians you can find.”

Ifs Thinking Ends Problem Care Internet Complexes Health Care Dimensions Categories Problem Solving Physicians Infrastructure Complex Problems Biotechnology

Author:Clayton Christensen

“The important thing is that over time, scientific progress transforms things that used to have to be dealt with in a problem-solving mode down to the pattern-recognition space; and from pattern recognition into the rules-based mode. This is the mechanism by which less-trained people are enabled to do more sophisticated things. This is always the way disruption happens. It enables a larger population of less-experienced people to do more sophisticated things.”

People Way Important Problem Happens Used Space Progress Important Things Patterns Population Recognition Mechanism Sophisticated Problem Solving Disruption Scientific Progress

Author:Clayton Christensen

“Another thing I've observed is how critical the role of the CEO is when a technology truly is disruptive. In looking back on companies that have successfully launched independent disruptive business units, the CEO always had a foot in both camps. Never have they succeeded when they spin something off in order to get it off the CEO's agenda. The CEOs that did this had extraordinary personal self-confidence, and almost always they were the founders of the companies.”

Self Order Company Roles Technology Feet Independent Extraordinary Critical Self Confidence Agendas Camps Founders Looking Back Units Ceo Disruptive

Author:Clayton Christensen

“In a large successful company where your power base as CEO isn't all that secure, it's hard for a CEO to pursue a truly disruptive strategy.”

Hard Company Successful Strategy Pursue Secure Ceo Disruptive Successful Company

Author:Clayton Christensen

“I think the impacts of 9/11 on academic freedom vary greatly depending on locale and time (softening with the passage of time), and even within the same community, and likely within the same schools. This variability makes it difficult to offer generalized responses without accompanying caveats.”

Thinking School Difficult Community Offers Impact Response Passages Academic Vary Passage Of Time Variability Academic Freedom

Author:Richard A. Falk

“I do think there is an enhanced awareness of insecurity and vulnerability that induces anxiety that creates pressure on teachers and administrators to offer simplistic explanations and to be resistant to expressions of attitudes that can be viewed as unpatriotic, which is further interpreted as applicable to any tendency to challenge the government when it claims to be acting overseas to avoid repetitions of 9/11 or to encroach on domestic freedom to identify suspicious persons and behaviors.”

“This kind of totalization of security consciousness [after tragedy of 9/11] has the effect within classrooms (and beyond) of constraining the imagination and reinforcing attitudes that privilege the forces of law and order as against the crosscurrents of freedom and dissent.”

Kind Law Order Force Imagination Consciousness Attitude Effects Security Tragedy Privilege Classroom Dissent Law And Order

Author:Richard A. Falk