Clayton Christensen, Who Changed The Business World With His Theory Of ‘Disruptive Innovation,’ Dies At 67
(Photo by Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival)
Clayton Christensen, one of the most influential business management thought leaders of a generation, prolific author revered for his revolutionary theory of disruptive innovation, which influenced executives to change the way they conducted business, a devout Mormon and leader in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, died Thursday, January 23 at the age of 67.
His family informed the media that Christensen passed away after a long, hard-fought battle with cancer. He resided in Belmont, Massachusetts with his wife Christine, whom he married in 1976, and has three sons Matthew, Michael and Spencer, and two daughters Ann and Catherine.
Clayton Magleby Christensen came from a humble background. He was born on April 6, 1952, the second of eight children, in Salt Lake City. His father was a grocery manager of a department store and his mother was a high school English teacher. Family legend claims that Christensen read the entire World Book Encyclopedia in sixth grade.
He played high school and college basketball and served as a missionary in South Korea in the early 1970s. As an economics undergraduate at Brigham Young University—he turned down acceptance to Harvard and Yale in accordance with his mother’s wish and the result of his own meditations—and met his future wife, Christine Quinn, there. After he graduated from Brigham Young, Christensen became a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University and received an M.B.A. degree at Harvard Business School.
Christensen went to work for the top-tier management consulting firm Boston Consulting Group. He left management consulting for a post as a White House Fellow, serving as assistant to two U.S. Secretaries of Transportation. Christensen helped found Ceramics Process Systems, a maker of materials used in microelectronics. He then joined the faculty of his long-term home and love, Harvard Business School, in 1992.
While Christensen was prolific in his writings and teachings, his legacy was cemented in his coining the concept of “disruptive innovation,” written in the Harvard Business Review in 1995. His theory was that small and emerging companies that offer a better solution to the needs of customers in their niche market will push older established corporations out of the way.
Christensen’s belief was that arrogant status-quo companies stuck in their ways would ignore the scrappy startups. They did this to their own demise, as the underdog newcomers would ultimately gain wide acceptance and dominate their industries.
Two years later, Christensen wrote and published The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail. Top CEOs of the time, particularly chip-processor giant Intel’s head Andy Grove, immediately adopted Christensen’s theory to ensure that his company was not overtaken by disruptors. At the time, Grove had said that it was the most important book that he had read in that entire decade. Grove and Christensen graced the cover of Forbes in 1999 and introduced the disruptive innovation theory to a wider audience of business professionals and entrepreneurs.
Christensen’s pitch to CEOs and corporate management was that they must be highly aware of new technologies and creative disruptive forces. He offered this dire warning, “Graveyards are full of firms that ignored a competitive threat like this one. Makers of sailing ships scoffed at steamships. Western Union, once the U.S.’ largest company, doubted that AT&T’s phone calls could replace its telegrams and even spurned an early chance to buy Alexander Graham Bell’s patents. Mighty Sears, Roebuck & Co. laughed at discounters.”
Today, it seems every newly launched company considers themselves disruptive. The term was freely and casually tossed about to the dismay of Christensen. His definition of disruptive innovation was viewed as a stealth attack on the accepted business standards. Pompous senior-level executives—in their hubris—ridiculed their pint-sized rivals at their peril. These young dynamic companies tapped into a need of their consumers that weren’t met by the bigger players. Over time, he predicted, the scrappy underdogs would get better, while the big companies became more complacent, and then their smaller rivals would eventually eclipse them.
The final years of his life were marked by over a decade of serious health issues. In 2007, he suffered a heart attack. In late 2009, Christensen was diagnosed with follicular lymphoma and then suffered a severe stroke a year later, while speaking in a church meeting. He gallantly tried to relearn how to speak, but ultimately had difficulties with it for the remainder of his life.
Christensen epitomized his own philosophy, as the 6-foot-8 giant of business management himself started from a modest background and went on to make a sizable impact on the business world, as well as on the people in his life. Michael B. Horn, cofounder and distinguished fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, wrote in a tribute to Christensen, “In reflecting on his life, I’ll remember that Clay was moved by kindness. He always put people first, as he sought to support them, learn from them and improve the world with them.”
In his groundbreaking book that serves as a guide for finding meaning and happiness in life, How Will You Measure Your Life?, Christensen shares this prescient wisdom, “Don’t worry about the level of individual prominence you have achieved; worry about the individuals you have helped become better people. This is my final recommendation: Think about the metric by which your life will be judged, and make a resolution to live every day so that in the end, your life will be judged a success.”