Clayton M. Christensen:The Most Influential Management Thinker

Clayton M. Christensen has been named the most influential management thinker in the world by Thinkers50! Clayton is the Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and is widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost experts on innovation and growth. Congrats Mr. Christensen!

Christensen is the bestselling author of a number of books including his seminal work,  The Innovator’s Dilemma (1997) which received the Global Business Book Award for the best business book of the year;  The Innovator’s Solution (2003);  Seeing What’s Next (2004); Disrupting Class (2008), which looks at the root causes of why schools struggle and offers solutions; The Innovator’s Prescription (2009), which examines how to fix the US healthcare system;  The Innovators’ DNA (2011); and The Innovative University (2011).

WITS Zen finds this as an opportune time to have a look at some of his best articles, slide decks and video snippets:

How Will You Measure Your Life?

” Before I published The Innovator’s Dilemma, I got a call from Andrew Grove, then the chairman of Intel. He had read one of my early papers about disruptive technology, and he asked if I could talk to his direct reports and explain my research and what it implied for Intel. Excited, I flew to Silicon Valley and showed up at the appointed time… Ten minutes into my explanation, Grove interrupted: “Look, I’ve got your model. Just tell us what it means for Intel.”

” I told the story of how Nucor and other steel minimills had begun by attacking the lowest end of the market—steel reinforcing bars, or rebar—and later moved up toward the high end, undercutting the traditional steel mills… What it means for Intel is…,” and then went on to articulate what would become the company’s strategy for going to the bottom of the market to launch the Celeron processor.”