Quotes from Clayton M. Christensen

If you develop a product that gets what the customer is trying to get done, you don't have to advertise; people will just pull it into their lives.

In an environment where you've got to push innovations out the door fast and keep the cost of innovation low, the probability that you'll be successful is actually much higher.

I felt that I could look back on my life and think about lots of folks that I helped become better folks. And I've tried to be as good a man as I could be.

I had a horrible heart attack and still have symptoms of that sometimes. Then cancer, which is in remission. But the stroke is the hardest thing because I just lost my ability to speak and to write.

I promise my students that if they take the time to figure out their life purpose, they'll look back on it as the most important thing they discovered while at school. If they don't figure it out, they will just sail off without a rudder and get buffeted in the very rough seas of life.

People in private equity complain that they have so much capital and so few places to invest. But you have lots of entrepreneurs trying to raise money at the low end and find that they can't get funding because of this mismatch. I think that there is an opportunity there.

Christine and I haven't raised our children. A whole community of selfless Christians has contributed to helping them become faithful, competent adults.

Optimizing return on capital will generate less growth than optimizing return on education.

Almost always, great new ideas don't emerge from within a single person or function, but at the intersection of functions or people that have never met before.

Efficiency innovations arise in industries that already exist. They provide existing goods and services at much lower costs. They are not empowering. Efficiency innovators become the low cost providers within an existing framework.

Finding a 'sacrificial lamb' on whom to tag blame for complicated problems is an important instrument in the toolkit of politicians, because it deflects blame for the nation's economic woes away from their own regulatory lapses, economic mismanagement and coddling to labor unions.

The process of writing 'The Innovator's Dilemma' entailed the developing a new theory. My colleagues, students and I have been improving that theory, and adding others to it, since that time.

I don't have my finger on the pulse of corruption in China, but I think most people on the ground would say that as China was emerging from communism, it was a very regulated society, and therefore, it was very corrupt. But as they have deregulated the economy, there just aren't as many opportunities for people to be corrupt.

When an entrant competitor attacks the low end of any market, the rational reaction of the incumbent firms is to abandon rather than defend it - because the low end is the least profitable of their possible investments.

The ability to share the gospel isn't a 'gift' that has been given to only a few Latter-day Saints and denied to the rest.

My wife comes most of the times I teach and stands on the front row to help me. She's been wonderfully supportive.

When you're thinking about your next product or current product and wondering how to make it different so you don't have competition, understand the job the customer needs to get done.

If we are to develop profound theory to solve the intractable problems in our societally-critical domains... we must learn to crawl into the life of what makes people tick.

Efficiency innovations are a natural part of the economic cycle, but these are the innovations that streamline process and actually reduce the number of available jobs.

There is no evidence that success in business will make us happy people or allow us to have happy families.

I brought one big question with me to Harvard. Why do smart companies fail?

You may hate gravity, but gravity doesn't care.

Management is getting people together to figure out how to transform inputs into outputs. In the process of figuring out the process of how people work together, you've got to figure out who's got what responsibilities, and how do they work together.

In the Mormon Church, we believe we can be married for all eternity, not till death do you part. As Mom was getting older, she was excited, truly excited, that within a few years she'd be with Dad again.