The Business of Life

Scholarly economic theory applies to more than just business. The same causal mechanisms that drive big corporations to success can be just as effective in driving our personal lives, says Professor Clayton M. Christensen. Open for comment; 9 Comments posted.

Five Ways to Make Your Company More Innovative

How do you create a company that unleashes and capitalizes on innovation? HBS faculty experts in culture, customers, creativity, marketing, and the DNA of innovators offer up ideas. From HBS Alumni Bulletin. Open for comment; 11 Comments posted.

Clayton Christensen’s “How Will You Measure Your Life?”

World-renowned innovation expert Clayton M. Christensen explores the personal benefits of business research in the forthcoming book How Will You Measure Your Life? Coauthored with James Allworth and Karen Dillon, the book explains how well-tested academic theories can help us find meaning and happiness not just at work, but in life. Open for comment; 74 Comments posted.

How Disruptive Innovation is Remaking the University

In The Innovative University, authors Clayton M. Christensen and Henry J. Eyring take Christensen's theory of disruptive innovation to the field of higher education, where new online institutions and learning tools are challenging the future of traditional colleges and universities. Open for comment; 20 Comments posted.

Five Discovery Skills that Distinguish Great Innovators

In The Innovator's DNA, authors Jeff Dyer , Hal Gergersen, and Clayton M. Christensen build on the idea of disruptive innovation to outline the five discovery skills that distinguish the Steve Jobses and Jeff Bezoses of the world from the run-of-the-mill corporate managers. Open for comment; 21 Comments posted.

Clay Christensen’s Milkshake Marketing

About 95 percent of new products fail. The problem often is that their creators are using an ineffective market segmentation mechanism, according to HBS professor Clayton Christensen. It's time for companies to look at products the way customers do: as a way to get a job done. Open for comment; 113 Comments posted.

Business Summit: Global Environment-Transformed Organization

According to two panel sessions led by HBS professor Clayton M. Christensen, successful organizations must continually transform themselves in today's dynamic world. Read More

Clay Christensen on Disrupting Health Care

Clayton M. Christensen

In The Innovator's Prescription, professor Clayton Christensen and his coauthors target disruptive innovations that will make health care both more affordable and more effective in the future. Q&A with Christensen. From the HBS Alumni Bulletin. Read More

How to Revive Health-Care Innovation

Simple solutions to complex problems lead to breakthroughs in industries from retailing to personal computers to printing. So let's try health care, too. According to HBS professor Clayton M. Christensen and coauthors of The Innovator's Prescription, such disruption to an industry might look like a threat, but it "always proves to be an extraordinary growth opportunity." Book excerpt. Read More

How Disruptive Innovation Changes Education

Clayton M. Christensen, Michael B. Horn, and Curtis W. Johnson

HBS professor Clayton M. Christensen, who developed the theory of disruptive innovation, joins colleagues Michael B. Horn and Curtis W. Johnson to advocate for ways in which ideas around innovation can spur much-needed improvements in public education. A Q&A with the authors of Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns. Read More

What Customers Want from Your Products

Marketers should think less about market segments and more about the jobs customers want to do. A Harvard Business Review excerpt by HBS professor Clayton M. Christensen, Intuit’s Scott Cook, and Advertising Research Foundation’s Taddy Hall. Read More

The Cycles of Theory Building in Management Research

Paul R. Carlile and Clayton M. Christensen

How do business academics know they are categorizing or measuring the best things to help us understand interesting phenomena? Scholars waste a lot of time and energy disparaging and defending various research methods. Yet the stakes are high for business academics to create theory that is intellectually rigorous, practically useful, and able to stand the tests of time. The authors describe a three-stage process for building theory; discuss the role of anomalies for building better theory; and suggest how scholars can refine research questions, carry out projects, and design student coursework. Read More

The Innovator’s Battle Plan

Great firms can be undone by disruptors who analyze and exploit an incumbent’s strengths and motivations. From Clayton Christensen’s new book Seeing What’s Next. Read More

A Diagnostic for Disruptive Innovation

You have three potential innovations, but resources to develop just one. Here are diagnostics to help you make the best decision. From Strategy & Innovation newsletter. Read More

How to Pick Managers for Disruptive Growth

"Right stuff" managers may be entirely wrong to lead a new-growth business. An excerpt from The Innovator's Solution by Clayton M. Christensen and Michael Raynor. Read More

Are Crummy Products Your Next Growth Opportunity?

Clayton M. Christensen, author of The Innovator’s Dilemma, talks about his upcoming follow-on book on creating sustainable new-growth businesses. His conclusions may surprise you. Read More

Andy Grove on the Confident Leader

Intel’s famous chairman discusses decision making, intuition, and corporate governance with professor Clayton M. Christensen and Harvard Business School Publishing Editorial Director Walter Kiechel. Read More

Six Keys to Building New Markets by Unleashing Disruptive Innovation

Managers know they need growth to survive—but innovation isn't easy. In this Harvard Management Update article, HBS professor Clayton Christensen and co-authors detail the six keys to creating new-growth businesses. Read More

Understanding the Process of Innovation

Just what is the BIG idea? In this Harvard Management Update piece, Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen helps us understand the sources of innovation inside companies and what blocks it. Read More

Healthcare Conference Looks At Ailing Industry

What's plaguing healthcare? Experts including HBS professor Clayton Christensen make the diagnosis on future trends for biology and medicine—and the business opportunities within—at the 2nd HBS Alumni Healthcare Conference. Read More

How Technological Disruption Changes Everything

From countries to companies, HBS Professor Clayton Christensen sees disruptive technologies upsetting applecarts all over the globe. In his talk at the HBS Global Alumni Conference 2001, Christensen discussed how disruptive technologies could change forever the health field, Microsoft, and even the Harvard Business School. Read More

Angels Face the Innovator’s Dilemma

According to HBS professor Clayton M. Christensen, the venture capital industry—like computers, telephony, and brokerage before it—is susceptible to the same forces that have waylaid many seemingly invincible players. What that means, said the author of the influential bestseller The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail, is that the time is ripe for the right people to create new, disruptive forms of financing. Read More

David, Goliath, and Disruption

When introduced with speed and flair, disruptive technologies have the power to boost new companies and lay low other, seemingly invincible incumbents. Technology-savvy experts at Cyberposium considered their own successes and failures with the volatile medium, and passed on a bit of advice, too. Read More

Growing Pains: Prescriptions for U.S. Health Care

The health care industry may look seriously ill, says HBS Professor Clayton M. Christensen, but it's merely suffering the growing pains of a natural evolution as technology forces change at both the high and low ends of the market. Read More