Clayton Christensen Quotes

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.

You've got to figure out how you're going to come in and significantly impact and redefine a market such that you become a market share leader in it.

Disruptive innovation is competitive strategy for an age seized by terror.

The reason why it is so difficult for existing firms to capitalize on disruptive innovations is that their processes and their business model that make them good at the existing business actually make them bad at competing for the disruption.

Efficiency innovations provide return on investment in 12-18 months. Empowering innovations take 5-10 years to yield a return. We have ample capital - oceans of capital - that is being reinvested into efficiency innovation.

As you craft a plan to expand to adjacent markets, don't disrupt: Avoid competition as much as possible.

When I hear people debate the ROI of social media? It makes me remember why so many business fail. Most businesses are not playing the marathon. They're playing the sprint. They're not worried about lifetime value and retention. They're worried about short-term goals.

Assuming a specific resource is high cost is often a path to disruption when someone makes a different assumption.

Companies cannot really see beyond their current customer base. They explicitly or implicitly do things to protect their current customers. And the last person to want real change is your customer. This is why most new ideas come from small companies that have nothing to lose.

I brought one big question with me to Harvard. Why do smart companies fail?

From a product development perspective, choosing whether a technology is disruptive at a potential moment is key.

No one should expect building a new high-growth, software-powered company in an established industry to be easy. It's brutally difficult.

When someone takes their existing business and tries to transform it into something else - they fail. In technology that is often the case. Look at Kodak: it was the dominant imaging company in the world. They did fabulously during the great depression, but then wiped out the shareholders because of technological change.

A strategy is something like, an innovative new product; globalization, taking your products around the world; be the low-cost producer. A strategy is something you can touch; you can motivate people with; be number one and number two in every business. You can energize people around the message.

As companies become bigger, the global environment more competitive, and the rate of disruptive technological innovation ever faster, the value to shareholders of attracting the best possible CEO increases correspondingly.

Societies or companies that expect a glorious past to shield them from the forces of change driven by advancing technology will fail and fall. That applies as much to my own, the media industry, as to every other business on the planet.

Executives need ample flexibility to respond to the market. That means both reducing costs and increasing innovation.

Relative to the taxi industry, Uber is a sustaining innovation; that is, it makes customers' lives better. Uber targeted mainstream markets with a better service for existing customers, and it succeeded in serving them better than the incumbents.

New products, new markets, new investors, and new ways of doing things are the lifeblood of growth. And while each innovation carries potential risk, businesses that don't innovate will eventually diminish.

I think we operate in a very dynamic marketplace, and as such, we need to constantly innovate.

In the private sector, there is always innovation. There's always change. There's always improving productivity, and if you're not leading that, you'll be passed and ultimately go out of business. So there's an urgency to constantly update and renew and to rethink your enterprise.

An adaptable company is one that captures more than its fair share of new opportunities. It's always redefining its 'core business' in ways that open up new avenues for growth.

Why is it that big companies fail when the technology changes? It happens in every industry, so what's the pattern? What are they all doing wrong?

It's important to remember that innovators in business don't always get a platform.

The great menace to the life of an industry is industrial self-complacency.