289 Quotes by Clayton M. Christensen

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.

In sacrificing for something worthwhile, you deeply strengthen your commitment to it.

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.

Motivation is the catalyzing ingredient for every successful innovation. The same is true for learning.

Disruptive innovations, in contrast, don’t attempt to bring better products to established customers in existing markets. Rather, they disrupt and redefine that trajectory by introducing products and services that are not as good as currently available products. But disruptive technologies offer other benefits – typically, they are simpler, more convenient, and less expensive products that appeal to new or less-demanding customers.3.

If you just look at the data, you are led to believe that things are getting better, rather than worse. That’s why the fall is really precipitous, once you hit the ceiling.

My conclusion: Management is the most noble of professions if it’s practiced well. No other occupation offers as many ways to help others learn and grow, take responsibility and be recognized for achievement, and contribute to the success of a team.

With every moment of your time, every decision about how you spend your energy and your money, you are making a statement about what really matters to you.

Culture is a way of working together toward common goals that have been followed so frequently and so successfully that people don’t even think about trying to do things another way. If a culture has formed, people will autonomously do what they need to do to be successful.