
Clayton Christensen has died - coloneltcb
https://www.deseret.com/faith/2020/1/24/21079323/clayton-christensen-harvard-disruptive-innovation-lds-mormon
======
michaelmarion
I was fortunate enough to be able to take a variation on Professor
Christensen's HBS course through a summer program of study offered by Duke
University; his son, Matthew, was himself an alumnus of both Duke and HBS and
was our instructor for the course.

We were lucky enough to have Professor Christensen himself fly in for a few
days for guest lectures. From the minute he walked into the door, his
intellectual brilliance was obvious, but our class very quickly discovered
what a kind person he was.

(This was right in the thick of the iOS-versus-Android wars and I recall
having quite the spirited lecture about the nature of the market and which
platform would eventually win out!)

I'll remember Professor Christensen as a brilliant thinker and, most of all, a
good man.

~~~
bilekas
I absolutely share your sentiment about him, I had absolutely no idea who he
was at the time but very quickly as you say, you get who he is, he lays it out
and that trait in people is something I will forever admire.

It's only hitting me now how much he actually knocked me in my path.

------
bart_spoon
More than anything, I admire him for the way in exemplified a balanced life.
He was obviously hugely influential in the realm of business, but his career
was clearly only ever a single part of his life, rather than the entirety of
his life. He was wise without being arrogant. He was spiritual and
contemplative without being preachy. He seems very much like the kind of
person I aspire to be.

~~~
ticmasta
So without stereotyping too harshly, I wonder if his humility came from his
faith? I've met quite a few LDS who show significant tolerance for beliefs
that conflict with their own, maybe because historically Mormons have been the
victims of intolerance?

~~~
tomrod
Exmormon here who has spent significant time with relatively larger names in
that org. No, Clay was pretty unique in my view. With due respect to him, the
tolerance of conflicting belief often portrayed by his co-adherents is
typically extended as a proselytizing or marketing tactic and isn't offered to
former Mormon congregants terribly often (see reddit.com/r/exmormon for
thousands of documented experiences, or the treatment of John Dehlin, Juanita
Brooks, or Sam Young).

~~~
bart_spoon
I would say that r/exmormon may not be the best indication of the faith as the
whole, as it is essentially the equivalent of a product review site where
people with the the biggest axes to grind congregate and create bit of a
bubble that is out of touch with reality, much like other subs that are
essentially devoted to the dislike of or dissatisfaction with something like
r/atheism, r/fuckepic, r/redpill, etc. That isn't to say there aren't valid
individual experiences there. But they aren't reflective of the overall
experience for most, even though they get painted that way.

A large portion of my Mormon friends fall on the spectrum of belief that would
range from "less devout" to "completely lapsed", and none of them have had
issues with the church as an organization or with individuals. But as such
they don't really care or look for communities of disaffected ex-mormons for
support, so their perspectives aren't heard.

~~~
tomrod
I shared your feelings before leaving Mormonism (I was heavily involved in
setting up the billboard community found in r/latterdaysaints and community
engagement via r/mormon several years ago). Over 100k former Mormons are
there. You get the full spectrum. It offers a community to people who are
kicked out of where their weekly community is no longer available (really,
read their experiences sometime). A lot of people get mistreated, at a
minimum, or downright abused.

~~~
DanCarvajal
As an atheist who lives in Utah, I wish r/exmormon would calm down a bit. The
echo chamber groupthink there is staggering.

~~~
rtkaratekid
As an exmo, I think that sub is toxic and unhealthy and a terrible way to find
balanced views. Very off topic from the article but I like to put that plug in
wherever I can.

~~~
DanCarvajal
I totally get it. It's bizarre to me the way debates about any significant LDS
figure or historical moment quickly becomes flooded with anti-LDS sentiment
from various sources, especially r/exmo types.

And then I'm just in the corner as an atheist who has an anthropological
fascination with LDS history and culture.

------
adaisadais
When I was in college I read “The Innovator’s Dilemma”. It totally changed my
life. I emailed Dr. Christensen and he responded! I thought i was the king of
the world.

Dr. Clayton Christensen’s books are some of the few ‘Business’ books that I
ever recommend to friends or colleagues. I find that “The Innovator’s Dilemma”
is applicable to almost all aspects of life.

Dr. Christensen will be greatly missed.

~~~
petra
// I find that “The Innovator’s Dilemma” is applicable to almost all aspects
of life.

How is it relevant to life, or business(besides being in a startup or
protecting a business from it)?

~~~
542458
spitballing some general aesops here:

Don't overfocus on what seems important today - look at the long run.

Improving at anything takes time and many iterations - if at first you don't
succeed...

Getting comfortable and set in your ways can blind you to great new things.

Just because you fail doesn't men you did anything wrong.

------
codeproject
Some times, when I look at some celebrity scholars, I scratched my head
wondering what did they do to deserve their reputation. But Dr.Christensen's
work is truly great. He is a genuine scholar. Innovator's dilemma is
groundbreaking research. I learned a lot from the book. Intel CEO Andy Grove
is a kind of arrogant guy for a lack of good words. Andy used to tell a16z's
Partner Ben Horowize that He has a full shelf of Management books gifted from
management Professors. Andy threw them away only keep the first page of each
book with author's signature and nice words. From this article,
Dr.Christensen's work apparently gained his respect. that is not an easy feat.
Considering Andy Grove himself also wrote a great business book, high output
management. Just check Dr.Christense's wiki page, He was a Rhode scholar. No
wonder. Clayton Christensen, Rest In Peace. You are a wonderful Professor.
Thank you. Miss You

------
bilekas
This is sad. I've read and continue to read more of the writings of the old
classic 'Philosophers', the reason I find their writing is because I like to
imagine, when they wrote their ideas and indeed philosophies, people of the
time might have imagined them as new age and progressive.

They were in a way, but by no means intentionally, just laying out ideas that
people should think about.

When it comes to people like Clayton Christensen, I really do regard him in
the same class. I was fortunate to have been introduced to him by another idol
of mine, and straight away, it was clear, this is a person who really uses all
the imagination that is possible, questions what the norms are, and at the
same time will reign everything in to practicality.

After that I went and read : 'How will you measure your ife?'

I was young enough at the time, in my 20's and thought I had the world figured
out. This book quickly corrected that.

I have met only a handful of people who know who this modern philosopher is,
but everyone will agree: He has made an impact.

It's a life well spent. And I hope to find more like him. R.I.P

"It's easier to hold your principles 100% of the time than 98% of the time"

------
gklitt
He was such an intriguing thinker.

I love this 2013 blog post from Ben Thompson. It's titled "What Clayton
Christensen Got Wrong", but I think it ironically does a good job of showing
how Christensen's ideas are actually interesting enough to deeply study and
debate, unlike many others in business.

[https://stratechery.com/2013/clayton-christensen-got-
wrong/](https://stratechery.com/2013/clayton-christensen-got-wrong/)

~~~
mrosett
Yeah, Ben is a big fan of Clayton Christensen. I doubt he would have written a
post with that title if he didn't think Christensen got most things right.

------
brentjanderson
I've long admired Clayton Christensen. My wife had the guts to ask his
secretary to put me on his calendar. She did, and I got 15 minutes of his
time. It was a surprise call, so when he was on the other end of the line, the
best I could do was compliment him for the work he's done and his books (How
will you measure your life, in particular).

He was so kind to take the time, and so genuine. That he would take the time
to chat with a complete stranger for a few minutes has been one of the most
important things I've learned from him, notwithstanding his books, talks, and
theories.

------
CrazyCatDog
This is incredibly tragic—Clayton had the courage to leverage data in a very
confined setting. A recipe that rarely works in academia (I’m a b-school
prof/associate dean). And, all the ingredients to his disruption thesis were
already there in his study of the hard-drive industry. His capacity to take
that ball and carry it from academia across to the managerial end-zone is a
mere pipe-dream for most. For Clayton, it was second nature.

His impact across both scholars and managers alike is—to this day—a
singularity.

------
Dave_TRS
Like many here I found "How Will You Measure Your Life" particularly helpful.
The book was based on a letter to his students, which provides a nice summary
and I keep handy to share with people:
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B50RBERcUJSba2Fmd2Z0VzdtZm8...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B50RBERcUJSba2Fmd2Z0VzdtZm8/view?usp=sharing)

~~~
ilikecoldbrew
Thanks for sharing. In addition to the summary, I really liked page 8 with
comments from the students.

In particular, this one stood out: "“You could see a shift happening at HBS.
Money used to be number one in the job search. When you make a ton of money,
you want more of it. Ironic thing. You start to forget what the drivers of
happiness are and what things are really important. A lot of people on campus
see money differently now. They think, ‘What’s the minimum I need to have, and
what else drives my life?’ instead of ‘What’s the place where I can get the
maximum of both?’”

It takes courage to buck the trend of what's normal or expected in society,
and we owe great thanks to those (like Clayton) who inspire and encourage us
to be courageous in this regard.

I also really liked this: "if your attitude is that only smarter people have
something to teach you, your learning opportunities will be very limited. But
if you have a humble eagerness to learn something from everybody, your
learning opportunities will be unlimited.

------
amoorthy
I saw Dr. Christensen explain his theory at a talk given to me and ~100
HubSpot colleagues about 10 years ago. I don't remember any other speaker like
I remember him. He was so kind and so clearly insightful. I know it sounds
cheesy but he felt like an uncle you just wanted to sit by and listen to.

May he rest in peace.

------
mrtimo
I heard Clayton Christensen speak at an "honors dinner" my freshman year of
university in 2000. I asked him what interesting things he did when he was a
university student. He said he would get together with his friends once a week
- and each would take 10-15 minutes to present the most interesting thing they
had learned that week.

He also organized a university wide book club - including making books
available at designated tables in the cafeteria, and hosting the author for a
speaking event. "Guns Germs and Steel" was popular at the time, and he used
that as an example of the type of book they would read.

Everyone knows about the Disruptive Innovation, but he also wrote "Disrupting
Class" on how disruptive innovations would change universities/education - and
put some out of business. On this vein he founded the Christensen Institute
[1] a non-profit (in Redwood City, CA). I don't know a ton about it, but I've
really enjoyed the research/ideas posted on their blog over the years!

Some here have posted about his faith. I've always thought it was bold that he
had a four page PDF on his personal website [2] about his faith [3].

[1]:
[https://www.christenseninstitute.org/](https://www.christenseninstitute.org/)
[2]: [http://claytonchristensen.com/](http://claytonchristensen.com/) [3]:
[http://claytonchristensen.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/07/Why...](http://claytonchristensen.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/07/Why_I_Belong_and_Why_I_Believe.pdf)

------
euph0ria
Clayton Christensen has been a great example to me in both business life and
spiritual life. We studied his works in business school a lot but my favorite
teaching that he ever gave was his "Decisions for which I've been grateful":
[http://www2.byui.edu/Presentations/Transcripts/Devotionals/2...](http://www2.byui.edu/Presentations/Transcripts/Devotionals/2004_06_08_Christensen.htm)

------
irrational
> he suffered a stroke that left him with expressive aphasia. The storyteller
> still could think and reason but no longer had the ability to direct his
> mouth to express the words in his head.

My oldest son was born with expressive aphasia. Not being able to communicate
what is in your head is so very frustrating. It must be so much more difficult
for someone who previously could speak without difficulty.

------
amrrs
I think Clayton Christensen is one of those rare professors from Management
B-School whose principles and theories made so much sense and helped a lot in
many businesses and in fact in life.

Things like Jobs to be done and How do you measure your life are wonderful
things for anyone to pursue in life (in a general sense)

------
VaedaStrike
My Sister is a member of his congregation in Boston, on a day when she was
having a difficult time managing the difficulty of being a young mother of 5
while in a chapel during worship services (this happened within the last year
or two) in the process of things there was a spill of things of hers into the
aisle way. She shot down to the ground to try and gather up all the things now
cluttering the aisle way. Of all the members of the congregation who could
have stepped over to lean down and help recover the diaspora it was “Brother
Christensen” who came over and, despite being in a body ravaged by age and all
he’d been through, using support for mere walking. There he was putting in the
genuine walk, leaning over repeatedly to help gather things for my likely
frazzled and overwhelmed sister.

My sister was vaguely aware that he’d achieved some notoriety. When I went on
to speak of the world wide reverberations of his work, it seemed to pale for
me to the history my sister had related to me just prior of what this kind,
old ‘disabled’ man had done for my sister. An act which virtually anyone else
in his position would be excused for presuming that someone else could handle
this ‘little’ need.

Thanks Bro Christensen for producing the rebar, the greatly undervalued acts
that keep our society actually functional and bearable.

------
neom
His book How Will You Measure Your Life? is a really great read (all his books
are great).

Here is a good summery of his theory of disruptive innovation:
[https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/4-keys-to-understanding-
cla...](https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/4-keys-to-understanding-clayton-
christensens-theory-of-disruptive-innovation)

------
mrosett
I just want to add my voice to the long list of people saying that a) he was
brilliant, and his work (particularly How Will You Measure Your Life) is worth
reading and b) he was just a kind, decent human being. I met him once and his
warmth really left an impression.

------
myth_buster
My previous company, in true disruptive fashion, was setup as an autonomous
entity outside of Fortune 100 mothership with the sole goal to crack a certain
market.

3 years in, as we were passing through the trough of disillusionment, I picked
up _The Innovator's Dilemma_. Boy did it predict everything we went through.
It was like happening upon the script for your life. It was a transcendental
experience. And I've recommended the book to anyone there who would listen to
me! At one point I was considering buying copies of it and giving it to the
executives but I refrained. One thing I took away from the whole experience is
knowledge will only take you so far, execution is everything. When someone
like Clay comes along and imparts profound wisdom, capitalize on it.

World lost a great mind.

------
pottertheotter
Outside of his influence on the business world, I've met him a couple times
and he was such a kind and genuine man. There are a lot of business school
professors who reach far less heights, often in obscure areas, and they let it
go straight to their heads.

------
bitL
I remember his lecture at Harvard when he talked about how cancer
diagnosis/heart attack changed him while he was writing "How Will You Measure
Your Life". Father of disruptive innovation, RIP.

~~~
jmhyer123
Any chance you have a link for this? I'd love to watch/read that.

------
tomheon
I was lucky enough to meet Clay Christensen once when he came to speak at a
company I worked at.

First he delivered a brilliant lecture on how companies repeatedly found
themselves put out of business by new technologies, even after having made
only decisions that actually increased their profits (his famous theory of
"disruption").

Then he went on to talk about how easy it was as a driven, career-focused
person--like most of the folks in that room--to invest too much in your career
and not enough in your family. He pointed out how you can see whether your
efforts in the office are paying off after a year or two, sometimes even
shorter--while you don't really know whether you raised your children well for
20 years or so. Since so many smart people are addicted to feedback loops of
quick success, he argued, that put them in special danger. You could easily
spend year after year making choices that increased your success in your
field, only to discover--too late--that you hadn't been paying enough
attention to things that mattered more.

He was one of the best speakers I've heard, picking precise words and moving
smoothly from topic to topic, but every once in a while he would hold up his
hand, bring his fingers together as if he were gripping a pen, and then twirl
his hand in a circle as if he were asking for the check. After the fourth or
fifth time, he stopped and apologized. He'd had a stroke recently, he
explained, and occasionally he couldn't remember the words he was trying to
say unless he pretended to write them in the air.

A brilliant, humble man, whose essential goodness was impossible to miss.

May he rest in peace.

------
gigatexal
Mormon here and I had no idea how influential he was to some of the greats in
business.

~~~
jchallis
His faith was extremely important to him. His essay on why he chose not to
play basketball on Sunday, because it was the first compromise that would lead
to every other compromise, has helped me keep my own moral compass pointed
north.

~~~
gigatexal
Ain’t that the truth. Without getting into details the path to many stupid
heartbreaking things I’ve done began with a small compromise. A Monson quote
has become all too poignant to me of late: “ One writer said that the door of
history turns on small hinges, and so do people’s lives. If we were to apply
that maxim to our lives, we could say that we are the result of many small
decisions. In effect, we are the product of our choices. We must develop the
capacity to recall the past, to evaluate the present, and to look into the
future in order to accomplish in our lives what the Lord would have us do.”
Fortunately I’ve moved on and learned from my mistakes but it’s just eery how
little things lead to the big ones.

------
pwthornton
Innovator's Dilemma and Competing Against Luck are the two best business books
that any tech person should read.

I have my students and product design team read them.

------
glesperance
I'm currently reading _Competing Against Luck_ and it is a truly eye-opening
book that highlights and puts the finger on a lot of the luck-based innovation
work we've been doing over the years.

I was planning on taking MR Christensen's online class[1] this coming April,
but I wonder if this will still be happening given Mr Christensen's passed
away.

Would anyone have any good resource, online classes, books, videos, etc that
they would recommend to learn more about Jobs to be Done and Disruptive
Innovation Strategy?

[1]
[https://online.hbs.edu/Documents/Syllabus_Disruptive_Strateg...](https://online.hbs.edu/Documents/Syllabus_Disruptive_Strategy.pdf)

------
mmcconnell1618
I had a chance to see him at the Business of Software conference in 2011.
Incredible mind. He will be missed.

Here's the video of his talk:
[https://vimeo.com/63125209](https://vimeo.com/63125209)

~~~
ticmasta
Hey - me too! Had he recently had a stroke prior to that conference? I don't
remember the details but thought something about bright lights really bothered
him.

Of note: I don't think he started his PHD until he was 50. I wish more people
at this stage of their lives pursued his sort of deep, meaningful research
combined with personal reflection and experience.

~~~
CrazyStat
Yes, he had a stroke in the summer of 2010.

------
guelo
Somewhat off topic but it's interesting that Andy Grove was a big proponent of
Christensen but Intel still got completely disrupted when the smartphone
revolution kicked off. Though Grove was gone by the time of the iPhone he
still should have seen it coming with the growing success of the Palm and
Windows Mobile devices that preceded it.

~~~
ghaff
Intel's main problem with mobile was that they saw x86 as a big potential
incumbent advantage given their dominance on desktop and server. Which _if
they could have made competitive x86 mobile chips_ would probably have been an
absolutely correct observation. But they couldn't even though they kept
plugging away past the point of no return.

I saw Intel presentations during the mid-2000s or so where they were making a
big deal about how x86 processors had fewer issues with Flash than other
architectures did.

~~~
martinpw
I think this is an important point. I was at a company that got disrupted out
of existence, and The Innovator's Dilemma was required reading for all
employees. So it's not that companies are necessarily unaware of the impending
problem, it's just that they are often structurally unable to respond.

------
carls
I remember reading How Will You Measure Your Life years ago right after
college and enjoying it.

I also found the following section from the article especially thought-
provoking:

> He second-guessed the wording of the label, but never the theory. Even after
> he changed his terminology to disruptive innovation, he saw flaws.

> “What we didn’t anticipate, and what in many ways was a fault of mine,” he
> told Quartz.com in 2016, “was that the term disruption has so many different
> connotations in the English language, that it allows people to justify
> whatever they want to do as, ‘Oh, this is disruptive,’ and they don’t ever
> read the book. The population of people where the fewest have read the book
> are venture capitalists. They are arrogant and smart and why do they need to
> read something?”

> He wished he’d created something less expressive. He began to discuss type 1
> innovations and type 2 innovations, with a nod to Daniel Kahneman, because
> he believed those terms were vague enough to force people to read and
> understand his work more closely.

It makes me think about the way complex ideas get distorted and re-interpreted
as they get repeated, like in a game of Telephone.

~~~
munchbunny
One of my litmus tests for whether I trust someone's judgement is whether they
take the time to read and interpret the concept, and whether they openly admit
when they have not.

There are a few words that come to mind in my day to day where this definitely
applies: "disruption," "affordance" (UX design), and "agile." All of them
point back to an originating body of research and writing and then tons of
discussion as the idea gained popularity, so there's a concrete test of "did
you read it and try to internalize it?"

------
theuri
Beyond the Innovator's Dilemma work, I found his "How Will You Measure Your
Life" a beautiful combination of heart + strategy + long game perspective.
RIP. [https://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-measure-your-
life](https://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-measure-your-life)

------
ancorevard
I got to learn about disruption theory through Horace Dediu
([http://www.asymco.com](http://www.asymco.com)) who is probably one its best
explainers and practitioners (the latter being why you should listen to Dediu
in the first place - skin in the game).

------
jquinby
I don't do a ton of business reading, but Christensen's stuff was top-notch
and always on the short-list of recommendations I'd make to others.

------
ycombonator
How will you measure your life -
[https://youtu.be/tvos4nORf_Y](https://youtu.be/tvos4nORf_Y)

------
sblank
We all stood on clayton christensen’s shoulders. Today we lost a giant. RIP.

------
pklee
What a great guy and an amazing human being. RIP Professor :(.

------
csours
I don't know if his family or loved ones will read this, but as much as I
learned from his writing, I appreciated his attitude and manner even more.

------
williamegan
I’m very very sad to hear this. This man was a gentle giant in the business
world. May his family find peace after their loss.

------
ChrisCinelli
This is a great article in so many different ways.

I like the enfaphasis on word choice:

> Disruptive innovation became a ubiquitous term. Cable channels produced
> “disruptor lists.” Some observers said the term’s use added sophistication
> to any discussion. Others complained it was overused. Various forms of it
> regularly pop up in discussions about sports, for example. To his chagrin,
> users often apply it as a synonym for anything new or transformative, not
> understanding Christensen’s actual theory. The ubiquity worried him.

> “If we call every business success a ‘disruption,’ then companies that rise
> to the top in very different ways will be seen as sources of insight into a
> common strategy for succeeding,” he once said. “This creates a danger:

> Managers may mix and match behaviors that are very likely inconsistent with
> one another and thus unlikely to yield the hoped-for result.”

 _THIS_. I witness this so many times a week.

People do not understand what the terms really means and _the difference that
makes the difference_.

This ends up being the source of misunderstanding when people says "X works"
and "X does not work."

"Agile", "Artificial Intelligence" and "Cloud" in the workplace are others
terms that are commonly misused.

In private life "intermittent fasting" and "meditation" come to mind.

If somebody is successful at something or they have something that work, I am
always ask about the process or giving me a real example of what they are
talking about.

Make the right distinctions is so critical to properly model their success.

> He second-guessed the wording of the label, but never the theory. Even after
> he changed his terminology to disruptive innovation, he saw flaws.

>“What we didn’t anticipate, and what in many ways was a fault of mine,” he
told Quartz in 2016, “was that the term disruption has so many different
connotations in the English language, that it allows people to justify
whatever they want to do as, ‘Oh, this is disruptive,’ and they don’t ever
read the book. The population of people where the fewest have read the book
are venture capitalists. They are arrogant and smart and why do they need to
read something?”

> He wished he’d created something less expressive.

This is so true. You want a phase that is catchy to grab attention of large
audience but you also need one specific enough that is hard to misuse.

------
tomrod
I will miss him. He was good folks.

------
quantified
Has he crossed the chasm?

------
codeproject
Just a random thought. why doesn't Professor Christensen run for President? He
will be a perfect, wonderful President. Nice, Decent, most of all,
knowledgable. His expertise is just what this country badly needed. President
Clayton Christensen. How nice. People from all over the world will love and
respect him.

~~~
danso
Skills and attribute applicable to business and academia don't automatically
translate to politics.

