Clayton Christensen Quotes

During the early stages of an industry, when the functionality and reliability of a product isn't yet adequate to meet customer's needs, a proprietary solution is almost always the right solution - because it allows you to knit all the pieces together in an optimized way.

If you're competitor-focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering.

The ability of a successful company to add functionality to its product has long been upheld.

Never ever compete on prices, instead compete on services and innovation.

Market growth alone doesn't give you enough tailwind. You have to create your own. The way to do that is by designing products for consumers that wow them.

One of Netscape's main attractions to customers from Day One is that we provide alternatives. And that's cherished by many customers - certainly not all.

So I think instead of focusing on the competition, focus on the customer.

When you improve your product so it does the customer's job better, then you gain market share.

I think if companies start reinventing themselves and focus on the customer experience more, they will win out in the end.

There are two ways to extend a business. Take inventory of what you're good at and extend out from your skills. Or determine what your customers need and work backward, even if it requires learning new skills. Kindle is an example of working backward.

What you can do is ask: 'What is the value to the customer? What are they willing to pay for?' Then, deliver great products and services.

I never think in terms of how we can compete against the other companies; rather, our primary focus is to make consumers feel the uniqueness and attractiveness of our products.

From the early days, Booking.com has been disruptive. Our aim is to create the best product for our customers, and we do that through constant innovation and testing.

When [competitors are] in the shower in the morning, they're thinking about how they're going to get ahead of one of their top competitors. Here in the shower, we're thinking about how we are going to invent something on behalf of a customer.

If we can keep our competitors focused on us while we stay focused on the customer, ultimately we'll turn out all right.

I think there are lots of opportunities to improve the product. When you read the press, people say, "Oh, the product needs improvement." I look at that and say, "Hey, that's an exciting thing to get behind!" Because they can improve that product. That leaves more upside from an innovation and revenue potential than you're gonna find in a lot of places. So you could say that's a downside, I see that as an opportunity.

If you build a great product or service, people will talk about it. But it starts with having something that's worth talking about.

Every day were saying, 'How can we keep this customer happy?' How can we get ahead in innovation by doing this, because if we don't, somebody else will.

Differentiate your products, provide great service and don't even think about trying to compete with Wal-Mart on Price.

Research is an organized method of trying to find out what you are going to do after you cannot do what you are doing now. It may also be said to be the method of keeping a customer reasonably dissatisfied with what he has. That means constant improvement and change so that the customer will be stimulated to desire the new product enough to buy it to replace the one he has.

You‘ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology - not the other way around.

Listen to your customers but don't (always) believe what they say-they know even less about the future than you.

Customers can't always tell you what they want, but they can always tell you what's wrong.

We win because we hire the smartest people. We improve our products based on feedback, until they're the best. We have retreats each year where we think about where the world is heading.

One thing I tell startups all the time is that the best way to grow is to make their product better.