Clayton M. Christensen Quotes & Sayings

“Many think of management as cutting deals and laying people off and hiring people and buying and selling companies. That's not management, that's deal making. Management is the opportunity to help people become better people. Practiced that way, it's a magnificent profession.”

“When a company identifies how to integrate the processes needed to give the consumer a sense of job completion, it can blow away the competition. A product is easy to copy, but experiences are very hard to replicate.”

“The single most important factor in our long-term happiness is the relationships we have with our family and close friends.”

“The breakthrough innovations come when the tension is greatest and the resources are most limited. That's when people are actually a lot more open to rethinking the fundamental way they do business.”

“There are direct paths to a successful career. But there are plenty of indirect paths, too.”

“The whole enterprise of teaching managers is steeped in the ethic of data-driven analytical support. The problem is, the data is only available about the past. So the way we've taught managers to make decisions and consultants to analyze problems condemns them to taking action when it's too late.”

“To become the kind of person you want to become, you've got to have discipline. It's easier to keep to your standards 100 percent of the time versus 98 percent of the time.”

“By doing what they must do to keep their margins strong and their stock price healthy, every company paves the way for its own disruption.”

“There are three types of innovations that affect jobs and capital: empowering innovations, sustaining innovations and efficiency innovations.”

“Almost always, great new ideas don't emerge from within a single person or function, but at the intersection of functions or people that have never met before.”