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But actually theory is very practical. Gravity is a theory, for example. It allows you to predict that if you step off a cliff you will fall you don't have to collect data on that.

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
Step
Cliffs
Theory
Collect
Steps
Predict
Example
Gravity
Actually
Practicals
Fall
Practical
Allows
Data
Cliff

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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. I think that's the way it will work for us all. Don't worry about the level of individual prominence you have achieved worry about the individuals you have helped become better people.
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If I know what to spec, and I can measure it, and there are no unpredictable interdependencies between what you do and what I must do in response, then an economist would say that is sufficient information for a market to emerge between you and me.
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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.
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How can you make sense of the future when you only have data about the past?
Clayton Christensen
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History is littered with great firms that got killed by disruption. Of course, the personal computer, a technology that first took root as a toy, got Digital Equipment Corporation. Kodak missed the boat for a long time on digital imaging. Sony was slow to get MP3 technology. Microsoft doesn't know what to do with open source software. And so on.
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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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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.
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There are more than 9,000 billing codes for individual procedures and units of care. But there is not a single billing code for patient adherence or improvement, or for helping patients stay well.
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An innovation will get traction only if it helps people get something that they're already doing in their lives done better.
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Management is the most noble of professions if it's practiced well.
Clayton Christensen
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Businesses want to think in terms of categories. Consumers want us to think in terms of their needs.
Clayton Christensen
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I have continued systematically to study the Book of Mormon and Bible to understand even more deeply what God expects of me and my family while on this earth.
Clayton Christensen
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...it's easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time.
Clayton Christensen
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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.
Clayton Christensen
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The only useful information about the market will be what I create through expeditions into the market, through testing and probing, trial and error, by selling real products to real people who pay real money.
Clayton Christensen
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You can talk all you want about having a clear purpose and strategy for your life, but ultimately this means nothing if you are not investing the resources you have in a way that is consistent with your strategy. In the end, a strategy is nothing but good intentions unless it's effectively implemented.
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Purpose must be deliberately conceived and chosen, and then pursued.
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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In the study of management, unfortunately, many writers have been so anxious to articulate a theory in the form of, If you do this, this will result, that they never go through this careful effort.
Clayton Christensen
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To prop up the stock price, managers have to turn down the screws on everybody. That forces them to cancel all the projects that would lead to future growth in order to drop money to the bottom line. This is HP's dilemma today. Once a company's growth has stopped, the game as we have known it is over. It's a scary thing.
Clayton Christensen