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

Clayton M. Christensen

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" From my first year on the faculty, there was always so much more I wanted to impart to the students. I decided that, rather than waste the last day of class summarizing the semester, I'd spend my time talking about what I'd learned in life that was useful. "

Clayton M. Christensen

" When you improve your product so it does the customer's job better, then you gain market share. "

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" Venture capital is always wanting to go up market. "

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" Managers are already voracious consumers of theory. Every time they make a decision or take action, it's based on some theory that leads them to believe that action will lead to the right result. The problem is, most managers aren't aware of the theories they're using, and they often use the wrong theories for the situation. "

Clayton M. Christensen

" The mistake that makes launching a venture expensive is when you try to make a disruptive technology so good that it can compete on a quality basis with an established product. "

Clayton M. Christensen

" An innovation will get traction only if it helps people get something that they're already doing in their lives done better. "

Clayton M. Christensen

" A major driver of the cost of healthcare in the United States is a compromise that was reached with the American Medical Association in the 1960s when Medicare was first established. "

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

" The Republicans are wrong in thinking that the rich create jobs. In reality, many of the richest Americans have been investing in efficiency innovations rather than to create jobs. And the Democrats are wrong, because growth won't happen if they distribute the wealth of the wealthy to everyone else. "

Clayton M. Christensen

" Do not be deceived by impostors. "

Clayton M. Christensen

" As I have studied the Bible and the Book of Mormon, I have come to know through the power of the Spirit of God, that these books contain the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. "

Clayton M. Christensen

" I haven't met too many people that don't intend to have a fulfilling life. High-achievers, however, end up allocating their resources in a way that seriously undermines their intended strategy. "

Clayton M. Christensen

" Many of the factors that we think will cause motivation, such as fair pay and a good manager, won't make you love your job. Even if you eliminate what makes you dissatisfied, that doesn't make you motivated. It doesn't make your work rewarding. You just are less bothered by things. "

Clayton M. Christensen

" There are companies trying to build business within Saudi Arabia, and what they find is that if they try to bring on locals and teach them how to become senior executives, they just don't show up to work. They are not predictable as to when they'll come in and how much of their hearts are into that opportunity. "

Clayton M. Christensen

" In organizations, once you articulate how success will be measured, everybody tries to game the system so that they are measured in the best possible way. "

Clayton M. Christensen

" If you're successful and growing, you can manage any way you want to. Growth makes so many dimensions of management easier. It's when growth stops that things get tough. "

Clayton M. Christensen

" People don't actually want to think about their own health and don't take action until they are sick. Yet employers are very motivated to get their employees healthy, since they bear most of the burden of their health care costs. "

Clayton M. Christensen

" 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. "

Clayton M. Christensen

" During the early stages of an industry, when the functionality and reliability of a product isn't yet adequate to meet customer's needs, a proprietary solution is almost always the right solution - because it allows you to knit all the pieces together in an optimized way. "

Clayton M. Christensen

" The single most important factor in our long-term happiness is the relationships we have with our family and close friends. "

Clayton M. Christensen

" I have continued systematically to study the Book of Mormon and Bible to understand even more deeply what God expects of me and my family while on this earth. "

Clayton M. Christensen

" To become the kind of person you want to become, you've got to have discipline. It's easier to keep to your standards 100 percent of the time versus 98 percent of the time. "

Clayton M. Christensen

" As a general rule, if you have a product that doesn't get the job done that a customer is needing to get done, then often you have to offer it for zero. Because if you ask for money for it - because if it doesn't do the job well, they won't pay for it. "

Clayton M. Christensen

" I got Type 1 diabetes at 30. It hit me in 1982 when I was a White House Fellow in Washington. I had viral pneumonia. I lost 35 pounds in six weeks. And I couldn't see anything. Everything was blurry. I was always thirsty. "

Clayton M. Christensen

" When considering a career move, consider the most important assumptions that have to prove true and how you can swiftly and inexpensively test if they are valid. Also, remain realistic about the path ahead of you. "

Clayton M. Christensen

" In our personal lives, we have a lot of businesses going on. I have a profession, I'm a father, a spouse, a good member of my community. How much of my time and energy can I allocate to each of those things? What I allocate becomes the strategy I have for my family, and everything else. "

Clayton M. Christensen

" Management teams aren't good at asking questions. In business school, we train them to be good at giving answers. "

Clayton M. Christensen

" The marginal cost of doing something 'just this once' always seems to be negligible, but the full cost will typically be much higher. Yet unconsciously, we will naturally employ the marginal-cost doctrine in our personal lives. "

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

" Innovation almost always is not successful the first time out. You try something, and it doesn't work, and it takes confidence to say we haven't failed yet... Ultimately, you become commercially successful. "

Clayton M. Christensen