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The best strategy is a balance between having a deliberate one, and a flexible, or emergent strategy.

Clayton Christensen

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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
Balance
Best
Emergent
Deliberate
Flexible
Strategy

More quotes by Clayton Christensen

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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.
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Capitalism has taught us that markets are always more efficient than hierarchical managerial coordination. But in a situation where those three conditions aren't met, I can't outsource or partner with you because markets don't function in the absence of sufficient information.
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Businesses want to think in terms of categories. Consumers want us to think in terms of their needs.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Purpose must be deliberately conceived and chosen, and then pursued.
Clayton Christensen
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Often they [writers on the study of management] have a point of view based upon intuition and experience. They then offer a cadence of two-paragraph examples carefully selected to prove their theory, and then they write one size fits all books. The message is, If you'd do what these companies did, you'd be successful too.
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Management has to provide the coordinating mechanism between what the supplier provides and what the user needs in not-good-enough situations where product architecture is consequently interdependent. Management always beats markets when there is not sufficient information.
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There are direct paths to a successful career. But there are plenty of indirect paths, too.
Clayton Christensen
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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
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When product performance outstrips the ability of customers to use that performance in an industry, the competitive game changes. Under those circumstances you have to decouple components businesses from assembly businesses.
Clayton Christensen
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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
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There are other dimensions of biotechnology. If you think of biotechnology like the Internet, it's not a category - it's an infrastructure that can be deployed to sustain or disrupt. In health care, the most complex problems at the high end have to be dealt with in a problem-solving mode by the best, most experienced physicians you can find.
Clayton Christensen
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Motivation is the catalyzing ingredient for every successful innovation. The same is true for learning.
Clayton Christensen
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Think about the metric by which your life will be judged, and make a resolution to live every day so that in the end, your life will be judged a success.
Clayton Christensen
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Disruptive innovations create jobs, efficiency innovations destroy them.
Clayton Christensen
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Justification for infidelity and dishonesty in all their manifestations lies in the marginal cost economics of “just this once.
Clayton Christensen
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Don't worry about the level of individual prominence you have achieved worry about the individuals you have helped become better people.
Clayton Christensen
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How can you make sense of the future when you only have data about the past?
Clayton Christensen