Quotes from Clayton M. Christensen

that leadership is more crucial in coping with disruptive technologies than with sustaining ones, and that small, emerging markets cannot solve the near-term growth and profit requirements of large companies.

In order to really find happiness, you need to continue looking for opportunities that you believe are meaningful, in which you will be able to learn new things, to succeed

Managers who don't bet the farm on their first idea, who leave room to try, fail, learn quickly, and try again, can succeed at developing the understanding of customers, markets, and technology needed to commercialize disruptive innovations.

Creating experiences for your children doesn't guarantee that they'll learn what they need to learn. If that doesn't happen, you have to figure out why that experience didn't achieve it. You might have to iterate through different ideas until you get it right. The important thing for a parent is, as always, to never give up; never stop trying to help your children get the right experiences to prepare them for life.

As difficult as it may seem, you've got to be honest with yourself about this whole process. Change can often be difficult, and it will probably seem easier to just stick with what you are already doing. That thinking can be dangerous. You're only kicking the can down the road, and you risk waking up one day, years later, looking into the mirror, asking yourself: What am I doing with my life?

People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole. It's a profound insight—first popularized by legendary Harvard marketing professor Ted Levitt decades ago.1

Why do well-managed companies fail? He concludes that they often fail because the very management practices that have allowed them to become industry leaders also make it extremely difficult for them to develop the disruptive technologies that ultimately steal away their markets.

But in disruptive situations, action must be taken before careful plans are made. Because much less can be known about what markets need or how large they can become, plans must serve a very different purpose: They must be plans for learning rather than plans for implementation.

Well-managed companies are excellent at developing the sustaining technologies that improve the performance of their products in the ways that matter to their customers. This is because their management practices are biased toward: Listening to customers Investing aggressively in technologies that give those customers what they say they want Seeking higher margins Targeting larger markets rather than smaller ones

This may sound counter intuitive, but I deeply believe that the path to happiness in a relationship is not just about finding someone who you think is going to make you happy. Rather, the reverse is equally true; the path to happiness is about finding someone who you want to make happy, someone whose happiness is worth devoting yourself to.

the job to be done." The insight behind this way of thinking is that what causes us to buy a product or service is that we actually hire products to do jobs for us.

There is no evidence that any of the leaders in developing and adopting sustaining technologies developed a discernible competitive advantage over the followers

Few people have physically and emotionally survived more than one SAP implementation project.42

they reached as far upmarket as they could in each new product generation, until their drives packed the capacity to appeal to the value networks above them. It is this upward mobility that makes disruptive technologies so dangerous to established firms—and so attractive to entrants.

Companies make attractive money when they solve the hardest problems.

important is to get out there and try stuff until you learn where your talents, interests, and priorities begin to pay off. When you find out what really works for you, then it's time to flip from an emergent strategy to a deliberate one.

The only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it.

People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole. It's

Every successful product or service, either explicitly or implicitly, was structured around a job to be done. Addressing a job is the causal mechanism behind a purchase. If someone develops a product that is interesting, but which doesn't intuitively map in customers' minds on a job that they are trying to do, that product will struggle to succeed

It is hard to overestimate the power of these motivators—the feelings of accomplishment and of learning, of being a key player on a team that is achieving something meaningful.

If you work to understand what job you are being hired to do, both professionally and in your personal life, the payoff will be enormous. In fact, it is here that this theory yields the most insight, simply because one of the most important jobs you'll ever be hired to do is to be a spouse. Getting this right, I believe, is critical to sustaining a happy marriage.

A man who is dedicated to helping improve the lives of other people A kind, honest, forgiving, and selfless husband, father, and friend A man who just doesn't just believe in God, but who believes God

It's easy for any of us to make assumptions about what our spouse might want, rather than work hard to understand the job to be done in our spouse's life.

we biased ourselves toward resources over the processes. It is what I described in the previous chapter as something parents do, and it's an easy mistake to make.