Quote

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

Clayton Christensen

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Clayton Christensen
Age: 67 †
Born: 1952
Born: April 6
Died: 2020
Died: January 23
Economist
Missionary
Priest
Professor
University Teacher
Writer
Salt Lake City
Utah
Clayton Magleby Christensen
Path
Successful
Indirect
Paths
Plenty
Direct
Career
Careers

More quotes by Clayton Christensen

Image
There needs to be conviction and action behind rules.
Clayton Christensen
Image
The biggest mistake is an over-reliance on data. Managers will say if there are no data they can take no action. However, data only exist about the past. By the time data become conclusive, it is too late to take actions based on those conclusions.
Clayton Christensen
Image
If you study the root causes of business disasters, over and over you'll find this predisposition toward endeavors that offer immediate gratification.
Clayton Christensen
Image
Innovation simply isn't as unpredictable as many people think. There isn't a cookbook yet, but we're getting there.
Clayton Christensen
Image
Management is the most noble of professions if it's practiced well.
Clayton Christensen
Image
We have found that companies need to speak a common language, because some of the suggested ways to harness disruptive innovation are seemingly counter-intuitive. If companies don't have that common language, it is hard for them to come to consensus on a counter-intuitive course of action.
Clayton Christensen
Image
We decided that humility was defined not by self-deprecating behavior or attitudes but by the esteem with which you regard others... Generally, you can be humble only if you feel really good about yourself - and you want to help those around you feel really good about themselves, too.
Clayton Christensen
Image
Businesses want to think in terms of categories. Consumers want us to think in terms of their needs.
Clayton Christensen
Image
Purpose must be deliberately conceived and chosen, and then pursued.
Clayton Christensen
Image
I've concluded that the metric by which God will assess my life isn't dollars but the individual people whose lives I've touched.
Clayton Christensen
Image
If a company truly wants to resolve the innovator's dilemma, it does need to be able to create wave after wave of disruptive innovation. And those disruptive innovations will typically grow to the point where they do cause some pain for leading companies. But most disruptive innovations create substantial new growth before they cause that pain.
Clayton Christensen
Image
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 weve taught managers to make decisions and consultants to analyze problems condemns them to taking action when its too late.
Clayton Christensen
Image
If the theory accurately predicts what they [scientists] see, it confirms that it's a good theory. If they see something that the theory didn't lead them to believe, that's what Thomas Kuhn calls an anomaly. The anomaly requires a revised theory - and you just keep going through the cycle, making a better theory.
Clayton Christensen
Image
Regulatory fiat cannot create a market at a technologically interdependent interface. And by the same token, regulation and so-called monopoly power rarely prevail at modular interfaces between stages of value-added technology.
Clayton Christensen
Image
Ultimately, when you come up with a classification scheme that is collectively exhaustive and mutually exclusive, then the theory can become what Kuhn called a paradigm.
Clayton Christensen
Image
There's usually some process by which a potentially great idea gets prostituted into something lacklustre, or by which the wrong idea gets put forward.
Clayton Christensen
Image
Because of the disruption phenomenon - technological progress outstripping the ability of customers to utilize it - the general tendency is for the money to migrate toward the subsystems.
Clayton Christensen
Image
Its actually really important that you succeed at what youre succeeding at, but that isnt going to be the measure of your life.
Clayton Christensen
Image
Questions are places in your mind where answers fit. If you haven't asked the question, the answer has nowhere to go. It hits your mind and bounces right off. You have to ask the question - you have to want to know - in order to open up the space for the answer to fit.
Clayton Christensen
Image
The outsourcing gurus have been driving the theory, and they are saying everybody ought always to do this. But it is really contingent on where you are on the spectrum from not good enough to more than good enough, relative to each tier of the market.
Clayton Christensen