Books by Clayton M. Christensen

The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book that Will Change the Way You Do Business (Collins Business Essentials)

by Clayton M. Christensen

Harvard professor Clayton M. Christensen says outstanding companies can do everything right and still lose their market leadership -- or worse, disappear completely. And he not only proves what he says, he tells others how to avoid a similar fate.

Focusing on "disruptive technology" -- the Honda Super Cub, Intel's 8088 processor, or the hydraulic excavator, for example -- Christensen shows why most companies miss "the next great wave." Whether in electronics or retailing, a successful company with established products will get pushed aside unless managers know when to abandon traditional business practices. Using the lessons of successes and failures from leading companies, "The Innovator's Dilemma" presents a set of rules for capitalizing on the phenomenon of disruptive innovation.

Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice

by Clayton M. Christensen, Karen Dillon, Taddy Hall, David S. Duncan

The foremost authority on innovation and growth presents a path-breaking book every company needs to transform innovation from a game of chance to one in which they develop products and services customers not only want to buy, but are willing to pay premium prices for.

How do companies know how to grow? How can they create products that they are sure customers want to buy? Can innovation be more than a game of hit and miss? Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen has the answer. A generation ago, Christensen revolutionized business with his groundbreaking theory of disruptive innovation. Now, he goes further, offering powerful new insights.

After years of research, Christensen and his co-authors have come to one critical conclusion: our long held maxim--that understanding the customer is the crux of innovation--is wrong. Customers don't buy products or services; they "hire" them to do a job. Understanding customers does not drive innovation success, he argues. Understanding customer jobs does. The "Jobs to Be Done" approach can be seen in some of the world's most respected companies and fast-growing startups, including Amazon, Intuit, Uber, Airbnb, and Chobani yogurt, to name just a few. But this book is not about celebrating these successes--it's about predicting new ones.

Christensen, Hall, Dillon, and Duncan contend that by understanding what causes customers to "hire" a product or service, any business can improve its innovation track record, creating products that customers not only want to hire, but that they'll pay premium prices to bring into their lives. Jobs theory offers new hope for growth to companies frustrated by their hit and miss efforts.

This book carefully lays down the authors' provocative framework, providing a comprehensive explanation of the theory and why it is predictive, how to use it in the real world--and, most importantly, how not to squander the insights it provides.

How Will You Measure Your Life?

by Clayton M. Christensen, Karen Dillon, James Allworth

From the world’s leading thinker on innovation and New York Times bestselling author of The Innovator’s Dilemma, Clayton M. Christensen, comes an unconventional book of inspiration and wisdom for achieving a fulfilling life. Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma, notably the only business book that Apple’s Steve Jobs said “deeply influenced” him, is widely recognized as one of the most significant business books ever published. Now, in the tradition of Randy Pausch’s The Last Lecture and Anna Quindlen’s A Short Guide to a Happy Life, Christensen’s How Will You Measure Your Life is with a book of lucid observations and penetrating insights designed to help any reader—student or teacher, mid-career professional or retiree, parent or child—forge their own paths to fulfillment.

HBR's 10 Must Reads on Managing Yourself (with bonus article "How Will You Measure Your Life?" by Clayton M. Christensen)

by Peter F. Drucker, Daniel Goleman, Clayton M. Christensen, Harvard Business Review

The path to your professional success starts with a critical look in the mirror.
If you read nothing else on managing yourself, read these 10 articles (plus the bonus article “How Will You Measure Your Life?” by Clayton M. Christensen). We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles to select the most important ones to help you maximize yourself.
HBR's 10 Must Reads on Managing Yourself will inspire you to: Stay engaged throughout your 50+-year work life Tap into your deepest values Solicit candid feedback Replenish physical and mental energy Balance work, home, community, and self Spread positive energy throughout your organization Rebound from tough times Decrease distractibility and frenzy Delegate and develop employees' initiativeThis collection of best-selling articles includes: bonus article “How Will You Measure Your Life?” by Clayton M. Christensen, "Managing Oneself," "Management Time: Who's Got the Monkey?" "How Resilience Works," "Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time," "Overloaded Circuits: Why Smart People Underperform," "Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life," "Reclaim Your Job," "Moments of Greatness: Entering the Fundamental State of Leadership," "What to Ask the Person in the Mirror," and "Primal Leadership: The Hidden Driver of Great Performance."

How Will You Measure Your Life? (Harvard Business Review Classics)

by Clayton M. Christensen

NOTE:This book is an article.

In the spring of 2010, Harvard Business School’s graduating class asked HBS professor Clay Christensen to address them—but not on how to apply his principles and thinking to their post-HBS careers. The students wanted to know how to apply his wisdom to their personal lives. He shared with them a set of guidelines that have helped him find meaning in his own life, which led to this now-classic article. Although Christensen’s thinking is rooted in his deep religious faith, these are strategies anyone can use.

Since 1922, Harvard Business Review has been a leading source of breakthrough ideas in management practice. The Harvard Business Review Classics series now offers you the opportunity to make these seminal pieces a part of your permanent management library. Each highly readable volume contains a groundbreaking idea that continues to shape best practices and inspire countless managers around the world.

HBR at 100: The Most Influential and Innovative Articles from Harvard Business Review's First Century

by W. Chan Kim, Clayton M. Christensen, Harvard Business Review, Michael E. Porter, Renee A. Mauborgne

The most definitive management ideas of the century, all in one place.
Harvard Business Review is the foremost destination for smart management thinking. Now, at its 100th anniversary, this commemorative volume brings together the most influential ideas since its inception.
With an introduction written by editor in chief Adi Ignatius, HBR at 100 features business publishing's most influential voices on innovative topics, including: Michael E. Porter on competitive strategy Clayton M. Christensen on disruptive innovation Tim Brown on design thinking Linda A. Hill on being a first-time manager Daniel Goleman on emotional intelligence Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee on artificial intelligence Robert Livingston on racial equity at work Amy C. Edmondson and Mark Mortensen on psychological safety Robert B. Cialdini on the science of persuasion W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne on blue ocean strategy Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad on strategic intent Peter F. Drucker on managing yourself

Whether you're a longtime reader or you're picking up an HBR volume for the first time, this book offers all you need to understand the most critical ideas in management.

The Innovative University: Changing the DNA of Higher Education from the Inside Out

by Clayton M. Christensen, Henry J. Eyring

The Innovative University illustrates how higher education can respond to the forces of disruptive innovation , and offers a nuanced and hopeful analysis of where the traditional university and its traditions have come from and how it needs to change for the future. Through an examination of Harvard and BYU-Idaho as well as other stories of innovation in higher education, Clayton Christensen and Henry Eyring decipher how universities can find innovative, less costly ways of performing their uniquely valuable functions. Offers new ways forward to deal with curriculum, faculty issues, enrollment, retention, graduation rates, campus facility usage, and a host of other urgent issues in higher education Discusses a strategic model to ensure economic vitality at the traditional university Contains novel insights into the kind of change that is necessary to move institutions of higher education forward in innovative ways
This book uncovers how the traditional university survives by breaking with tradition, but thrives by building on what it's done best.

Q&A with the Authors

Why did you write The Innovative University?
Given our combined expertise in the study of business innovation and working within the university setting, we decided to write The Innovative University to share some ideas about what innovation could make possible in higher education. We wanted to show how new strategies, many of them driven by online technology, make it possible to serve more students at lower cost while also increasing quality and improving the learning experience--something we saw in practice within our own university homes. Since then, the world has moved into a major economic downturn. Slow economic growth, high government and household debt, rising college tuition, declining graduation rates, and growing competition from the rapidly growing for-profit higher education sector combined to create a renewed sense of urgency for our message. We could see how the same online learning technologies that can benefit traditional institutions can also disrupt them. So, our message became cautiously optimistic. Online learning, we believe, will either disrupt traditional universities and colleges or create opportunities for them to serve more students and lead the country to greater prosperity. It depends on whether they cling to a model that has changed little in the past 150 years or embrace learning innovations made possible by new technology.

What forces are threatening traditional universities, and why does preserving them matter?
Traditional universities are an indispensable cornerstone of society and culture. The college experience is transformative for so many people, and it is an experience people cannot get elsewhere.

But while we can’t afford to lose the traditional college experience, we also can't afford to support it on its current trajectory. In their race to constantly make themselves bigger and better, colleges and university have steadily driven up cost. They've lost focus on their once-modest missions and are now unsustainably overstretched and overcommitted. The economic downturn is exposing them, as seen by the increasing number of students who are jumping ship to alternative forms of higher education like community colleges, for-profit universities, technical institutes and online degree programs.

We assert that colleges and universities must break with tradition and find innovative, less costly ways of performing their uniquely valuable functions, allowing them to once again become responsive to the needs of learners.

Why do you advocate for colleges and universities to embrace online education?
Online technology makes a college or university vastly more attractive to a wide subset of students. It gives many people a second chance at learning – i.e. those who cannot afford a traditional college education, those who do not have the flexibility to take part in a full plate of coursework, and late bloomers or dropouts who have fall

The Innovator's DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators

by Clayton M. Christensen, Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen

A new classic, cited by leaders and media around the globe as a highly recommended read for anyone interested in innovation.

In The Innovator’s DNA, authors Jeffrey Dyer, Hal Gregersen, and bestselling author Clayton Christensen (The Innovator’s Dilemma, The Innovator’s Solution, How Will You Measure Your Life?) build on what we know about disruptive innovation to show how individuals can develop the skills necessary to move progressively from idea to impact.

By identifying behaviors of the world’s best innovators—from leaders at Amazon and Apple to those at Google, Skype, and Virgin Group—the authors outline five discovery skills that distinguish innovative entrepreneurs and executives from ordinary managers: Associating, Questioning, Observing, Networking, and Experimenting.

Once you master these competencies (the authors provide a self-assessment for rating your own innovator’s DNA), the authors explain how to generate ideas, collaborate to implement them, and build innovation skills throughout the organization to result in a competitive edge. This innovation advantage will translate into a premium in your company’s stock price—an innovation premium—which is possible only by building the code for innovation right into your organization’s people, processes, and guiding philosophies.

Practical and provocative, The Innovator’s DNA is an essential resource for individuals and teams who want to strengthen their innovative prowess.

The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business

by Clayton M. Christensen

“Absolutely brilliant. Clayton Christensen provides an insightful analysis of changing technology and its importance to a company’s future success.”
—Michael R. Bloomberg
“This book ought to chill any executive who feels bulletproof —and inspire entrepreneurs aiming their guns.”
—Forbes
The Innovator’s Dilemma is the revolutionary business book that has forever changed corporate America. Based on a truly radical idea—that great companies can fail precisely because they do everything right—this Wall Street Journal, Business Week and New York Times Business bestseller is one of the most provocative and important business books ever written. Entrepreneurs, managers, and CEOs ignore its wisdom and its warnings at their great peril.

The Clayton M. Christensen Reader

by Clayton M. Christensen, Harvard Business Review

The best of Clayton Christensen’s seminal work on disruptive innovation, all in one place.
No business can afford to ignore the theory of disruptive innovation. But the nuances of Clayton Christensen’s foundational thinking on the subject are often forgotten or misinterpreted. To achieve continuing growth in your business while defending against upstarts, you need to understand clearly what disruption is and how it works, and know how it applies to your industry and your company. In this collection of Christensen’s most influential articles―carefully selected by Harvard Business Review’s editors―his incisive arguments, clear theories, and readable stories give you the tools you need to understand disruption and what to do about it. The collection features Christensen’s newest article looking back on 20 years of disruptive innovation: what it is, and what it isn’t.
Covering a broad spectrum of topics―business model innovation, mergers and acquisitions, value-chain shifts, financial incentives, product development―these articles illuminate the impact and implications of disruptive innovation as well as Christensen’s broader thinking on management theory and its application in business and in life.
This collection of best-selling articles includes: “Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave,” by Joseph L. Bower and Clayton M. Christensen, “Meeting the Challenge of Disruptive Change,” by Clayton M. Christensen and Michael Overdorf, “Marketing Malpractice: The Cause and the Cure,” by Clayton M. Christensen, Scott Cook, and Taddy Hall, “Innovation Killers: How Financial Tools Destroy Your Capacity to Do New Things,” by Clayton M. Christensen, Stephen P. Kaufman, and Willy C. Shih, “Reinventing Your Business Model,” by Mark W. Johnson, Clayton M. Christensen, and Henning Kagermann, “The New M&A Playbook,” by Clayton M. Christensen, Richard Alton, Curtis Rising, and Andrew Waldeck, “Skate to Where the Money Will Be,” by Clayton M. Christensen, Michael E. Raynor, and Matthew Verlinden, “Surviving Disruption,” by Maxwell Wessel and Clayton M. Christensen, “What Is Disruptive Innovation?” by Clayton M. Christensen, Michael E. Raynor, and Rory McDonald, “Why Hard-Nosed Executives Should Care About Management Theory,” by Clayton M. Christensen and Michael E. Raynor, and “How Will You Measure Your Life?” by Clayton M. Christensen.

The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Management of Innovation and Change)

by Clayton M. Christensen

Named one of 100 Leadership & Success Books to Read in a Lifetime by Amazon Editors

A Wall Street Journal and Businessweek bestseller. Named by Fast Company as one of the most influential leadership books in its Leadership Hall of Fame. An innovation classic. From Steve Jobs to Jeff Bezos, Clay Christensen’s work continues to underpin today’s most innovative leaders and organizations.

The bestselling classic on disruptive innovation, by renowned author Clayton M. Christensen.

His work is cited by the world’s best-known thought leaders, from Steve Jobs to Malcolm Gladwell. In this classic bestseller—one of the most influential business books of all time—innovation expert Clayton Christensen shows how even the most outstanding companies can do everything right—yet still lose market leadership.

Christensen explains why most companies miss out on new waves of innovation. No matter the industry, he says, a successful company with established products will get pushed aside unless managers know how and when to abandon traditional business practices.

Offering both successes and failures from leading companies as a guide, The Innovator’s Dilemma gives you a set of rules for capitalizing on the phenomenon of disruptive innovation.

Sharp, cogent, and provocative—and consistently noted as one of the most valuable business ideas of all time—The Innovator’s Dilemma is the book no manager, leader, or entrepreneur should be without.

The Innovator's Dilemma, with a New Foreword When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail

by Clayton M. Christensen

The bestselling classic on disruptive innovation by renowned author Clayton M. Christensen.

A Wall Street Journal and Businessweek Bestseller.

Named by the Economist as one of the six most important books about business ever written.

Named by Fast Company as one of the most influential leadership books in its Leadership Hall of Fame.

His work is cited by the world's best-known thought leaders, from Steve Jobs to Malcolm Gladwell. In this classic bestseller--one of the most influential business books of all time--innovation expert Clayton Christensen shows how even the most outstanding companies can do everything right yet still lose market leadership.

Now with a foreword by Marc Benioff, the cofounder and CEO of Salesforce, Christensen explains why most companies miss out on new waves of innovation. No matter the industry, he says, a successful company with established products will get pushed aside unless managers know how and when to abandon traditional business practices.

Offering both successes and failures from leading companies as a guide, The Innovator's Dilemma gives you a set of rules for capitalizing on the phenomenon of disruptive innovation.

Sharp, cogent, and provocative--and consistently noted as one of the most valuable business ideas of all time--The Innovator's Dilemma is the book no manager, leader, or entrepreneur should be without.