Clayton M. Christensen is the Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Business
Administration at the Harvard Business School, with a joint appointment in the
Technology & Operations Management and General Management faculty groups. His
research and teaching interests center on managing innovation and creating new
growth markets.
Professor Christensen holds a B.A. with highest honors in economics from
Brigham Young University (1975), and an M.Phil. in applied econometrics and the
economics of less-developed countries from Oxford University (1977), where he
studied as a Rhodes Scholar. He received an MBA with High Distinction from the
Harvard Business School in 1979, graduating as a George F. Baker Scholar. He
was awarded his DBA from the Harvard Business School in 1992.
A seasoned entrepreneur, Christensen has founded three successful companies.
The first, CPS Corporation, is an advanced materials manufacturing company that
he founded in 1984 with several MIT professors. The second, Innosight, is a
consulting and training company focused on problems of strategy, innovation,
and growth that Christensen founded with several of his former students in
2000. Innosight Capital, the third firm, was launched in 2005. From 1979 to
1984 he worked with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In 1982 Professor
Christensen was named a White House Fellow, and served as assistant to U.S.
Transportation Secretaries Drew Lewis and Elizabeth Dole.
Professor Christensen became a faculty member at the Harvard Business School in
1992. He is author or co-author of five books: The Innovator's Dilemma (1997),
which received the Global Business Book Award for the best business book
published in 1997; The Innovator's Solution (2003), also a New York Times best
seller; and Seeing What's Next (2004). In addition, he has edited two case
books on innovation: Innovation and the General Manager (1999) and Strategic
Management of Technology and Innovation, 4th edition (2004). He presently is
completing two books that examine the problems of our healthcare and public
education systems through the lenses of his theories. These also will show how
the problems in these industries can be resolved.
Professor Christensen's writings have won a number of additional awards,
including the Best Dissertation Award from The Institute of Management
Sciences; the Production and Operations Management Society's William Abernathy
Award for the best paper in the management of technology; the Newcomen
Society's award for the best paper in business history; and the 1995 and 2001
McKinsey Awards for articles published in the Harvard Business Review.
Professor Christensen was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. He worked as a
missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the Republic
of Korea from 1971 to 1973 and speaks fluent Korean. He currently serves his
church as an Area Authority Seventy, and recently published an essay about his
beliefs, entitled "Why I Believe".
Professor Christensen is also extensively involved in other activities in the
community. He served from 1986 to 1994 as a member of the Program Review Board
and Strategic Planning Committee of the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston,
and was a member and chairman of the board of directors of the Massachusetts
Affiliate of the American Diabetes Association between 1984 and 1996. Professor
Christensen was also a founding board member of the Combined Health Appeal of
Northeastern Massachusetts. He was an elected member of the Town Meeting
(council) in Belmont Massachusetts for eight years; served as vice-chairman of
the town's personnel board; and as chairman of its long-range financial
planning task force. He has served the Boy Scouts of America for 25 years as a
scoutmaster, cubmaster, den leader and troop and pack committee chairman. He
and his wife Christine live in Belmont, MA. They are the parents of five
children.
