A disruptive innovation is a technologically simple innovation in the form of a product, service, or business model that takes root in a tier of the market that is unattractive to the established leaders in an industry.

— Clayton M. Christensen

American capitalists, enthralled by the doctrines of finance, have put their income statements in service of the balance sheet.

— Clayton M. Christensen

As a general rule, when a new industry takes root, and the first products emerge in a wave, almost always the architecture of the product will be proprietary and interdependent in character.

— Clayton M. Christensen

Disruption is, at its core, a really powerful idea.

— Clayton M. Christensen

For 300 years, higher education was not disruptable because there was no technological core.

— Clayton M. Christensen

… I came to understand that while many of us might default to measuring our lives by summary statistics, such as number of people presided over, number of awards, or dollars accumulated in a bank, and so on, the only metrics that will truly matter to my life are the individuals whom I have been able to help, one by one, to become better people.

— Clayton M. Christensen

If present rates of improvement continue, however, we would expect the cruising range of electric cars, for example, to intersect with the average range demanded in the mainstream market by 2015, and electric vehicle acceleration to intersect with mainstream demands by 2020.

— Clayton M. Christensen

In the universities, we teach you what we decide you need to know. And the employers find out when they hire people that students didn't learn what we needed them to learn. Online learning offerings, like the University of Phoenix, have relationships with employers and teach what you need to know.

— Clayton M. Christensen

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.

— Clayton M. Christensen

No idea for a new growth business ever comes fully shaped. When it emerges, it's half-baked, and it then goes through a process of becoming fully shaped.

— Clayton M. Christensen