Clayton Christensen Quotes

The core value that differentiates Apple is our ability to innovate.

Investors can see that Facebook is feeling old and tired and isn't seeming to be that innovative.

In the end, I hope there's a little note somewhere that says I designed a good computer.

… people who have built a business doing it the old way think it would be better if things could be more stable for longer periods of time. But you have to remember, new inventions are not inherently disruptive. Invention is only disruptive if customers say, “Hey, I like this better than the old way”.

As a global disrupter, Uber is no stranger to conflict, and its instinct has always been pugilistic.

When I first got to Apple, which was in '84, the Mac was already out, and 'Newsweek' contacted me and asked me what I thought of the Mac. I said, 'Well, the Mac is the first personal computer good enough to be criticized.'

With Facebook's IPO, the world learned a new way of organizing businesses around one overriding imperative: to ship new products quickly.

The success stories in biotechnology are mainly due to the straightforward application of design thinking in both the business and science aspects of our lean startups.

What I believe is that Nintendo is a very unique company because it does its business by designing and introducing people to hardware and software - by integrating them, we can be unique.

When the Mac first came out, Newsweek asked me what I [thought] of it. I said: Well, it's the first personal computer worth criticizing. So at the end of the presentation, Steve came up to me and said: Is the iPhone worth criticizing? And I said: Make the screen five inches by eight inches, and you'll rule the world.

A lot has been written about the Internet bust. From my point of view, it's quite clear the Internet isn't a category; the Internet is a technological infrastructure that can be deployed to facilitate a disruptive business model or a sustaining business model.

Every single industry is going through a major business model and technology oriented disruption.

Every disruptive innovation is powered by a simplifying technology, and then the technology has to get embedded in a different kind of a business model. The first two decades of digital computing were characterized by the huge mainframe computers that filled a whole room, and they had to be operated by PhD Computer Scientists. It took the engineers at IBM about four years to design these mainframe computers because there were no rules. It was an intuitive art and just by trial and error and experimentation they would evolve to a computer that worked.

Whether or not science can be applied to that mental construct [i.e. the designed entity] is a matter of availability. If there is body of scientific knowledge that can be applied, then it would be foolish not to exploit it. However, if there is none, it does not mean that the thing cannot be designed, made, and used safely.

It's can you, Steve Wozniak, design the same computer - maybe it's a Varian 620i - can you design it on paper with fewer chips than last month? Can you design it with 79 chips instead of 80 chips? I had played this game so long that I had all these little tricks in my head that I can't even explain... Nothing was wasted; absolutely zero waste. I told this story recently to the Resource Recovery Association, recycling, and they loved to hear I didn't believe in waste.

Darwinism may be a fine theory in other contexts, but in startups, intelligent design works best.

I'm interested in the innovator and the early adopter.

It's actually very difficult to make something both simple and good.

The primary thing that any technology startup must do is build a product that's at least 10 times better at doing something than the current prevailing way of doing that thing. Two or three times better will not be good enough to get people to switch to the new thing fast enough or in large enough volume to matter.

Excellence matters, and technology advances so fast that the potential for improvement is tremendous. So, since becoming CEO again, I've pushed hard to increase our velocity, improve our execution, and focus on the big bets that will make a difference in the world.

Innovation is often the hidden thing, because we can't put numbers to it. And yet it's the thing that defines the way we live, the things we'd like to have for everyone whether it's health or education.

A sort of angry populism here in the UK and across Europe, a sort of anti-political mood and what then steps into that place? In one episode [of Black Mirror] you won't have seen, there's a very simple gaming gadget that turns out to be a monstrous idea, which I suspect we will end up doing for real.

What you want to do is innovate on your product and your business model, management structure is not where I would try and innovate.

Engineering is the application of scientific principles toward practical ends. If the engineering isn't practical, it's bad engineering.

The engineers of the future will be poets.