Clayton Christensen Quotes

I think there are certain business matters which we must now conduct differently than we used to.

That is the key challenge facing management today; change is the only constant.

The Internet is ultimately about innovation and integration, but you don't get the innovation unless you integrate Web technology into the processes by which you run your business.

Many companies don't exist after 25 years. It's a rarity. Or if they do exist, they're like IBM, with a totally changing personality.

You don't implement change easily in Japan unless you explain very clearly why you need to do this change, how you're going to do this change and what's going to be the outcome of this change. If you offset or you forget to explain one of these three steps you're not going to do it.

I've always been about how will digital be transforming established businesses, and that's what I've done.

This is a fantastic time to be entering the business world, because business is going to change more in the next 10 years than it has in the last 50.

I am honored to be able to serve GM at this critical juncture and take part in its reinvention.

Startups are rapidly changing systems. If you use an annual review cycle, you aren't getting feedback at the same pace that you need to adapt and change the business.

The IT organization can't drive or lead a digital transformation. It has to come from the business and the business strategy, because they're fundamental to how a company or an organization evolves.

I was one of the early folks at eBay, and by 1999, it was completely overrun by consultants from McKinsey, Bain, and BCG. It went from being a cool, fun startup to an MBA factory.

In the mid-'80s when the business took a big change, everybody was living their character.

My goal is to change NXT. It is to change every company I've ever been to, and I've changed every company.

Innovation at large companies is hard, but it doesn't have to be.

Innovation is the specific tool of entrepreneurs, the means by which they exploit change as an opportunity for a different business or a different service.

Organizations need to undergo fundamental changes, both in order to adapt to the new business environment and to become ecologically sustainable.

John Akers once said that changing IBM's culture was more difficult than getting elephants to dance. Of course it's really difficult, as Lou Gerstner also found out years later. The title of his own book is Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? He and his top executives were change masters at IBM. All organizations, especially the larger ones, will always need change masters. Dissatisfaction with the status quo and efforts to improve it should be encouraged rather than discouraged. Regrettably, that is often not the case.

It's like in biological evolution: The population will evolve, even though individuals can't. The same thing happens in the corporate world: The population of business units within corporations evolves, even though individual business units can't. That's because the capabilities of business units reside in their processes and their values, and by their very nature, processes and values are inflexible and meant not to change.

I believe in evolution and I think when it comes to business and the roots of business and the fundamentals of business, I don't think that ever changes. I think the idea of change is an illusion, but in nature it's necessary to change and perhaps business is a part of nature. I'm not totally sure.

The world is changing. We all know this. And as that world changes, if you don't transform your company, you're stuck.

Fixing culture is the most critical − and the most difficult − part of a corporate transformation… In the end, management doesn’t change culture. Management invites the workforce itself to change the culture.

I believe quite simply that the small company of the future will be as much a research organization as it is a manufacturing company.

I think there has to be a recognition that, you know, there's so much at stake now, I mean, the business has changed so much and decisions are made so quickly, in nano seconds basically.

In the long term the most important question for a company is not what you are but what you are becoming.

I think it's a sign that the establishment is going to have to change. For too long they never thought about the average person, because the average person is not organized.