Clayton Christensen, Father of 'Disruptive Innovation,' Dies At 67

Clayton Christensen, the business scholar who coined the term "disruptive innovation," died of cancer treatment complications on Thursday at age 67. The Verge reports: You may not immediately recognize his name, but the tech industry -- and every resulting industry -- is built on the framework of technology disruption and innovation that Christensen devised. The crux of Christensen's theory is that big, successful companies that neglect potential customers at the lower end of their markets (mainframe computers, in his famous example) are ripe for disruption from smaller, more efficient, more nimble competitors that can do almost as good a job more cheaply (like personal computers). One need look no further than the biggest names in Silicon Valley to find evidence of successful disrupters, from Napster to Amazon to Uber to Airbnb and so on.

And scores of notable tech leaders have for years cited Christensen's 1997 book The Innovator's Dilemma as a major influence. It's the only business book on the late Steve Jobs' must-read list; Netflix CEO Reed Hastings read it with his executive team when he was developing the idea for his company; and the late Andy Grove, CEO of Intel, said the book and Christensen's theory were responsible for that company's turnaround. [...] He later refined his thinking on disruption, introducing the concept of "jobs to be done," which stressed the need to focus on customers' needs, and acknowledged that disruption was a great way to start a company, but not a good way to grow a company. "It's not a manual for how to grow or how to predict what customers want. [Jobs to be done] is the second side of the same coin: How can I be sure that competitors won't kill me and how can I be sure customers will want to buy the product? So it's actually a very important compliment to disruption."

Father of disruptive inovation

[Arthur, KBE]

That title belongs with Elon Musk. SpaceX, Tesla, and Startlink.

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[110010001000]

Agreed. Who else could invent rocket launches, electric vehicles and satellite Internet? By the way, it is STARLINK not "Startlink". Get it right!

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[nukenerd]

You forgot - Musk has invented tunnels too.

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[Sebby]

Read the article - though badly worded (he admitted this himself), "disruptive innovation" means more something that, while appearing inferior to incumbents, makes a technolog (or anything) more accessible to the masses and introduces transformative changes.

RIP

[teg]

I first heard of him - or rather, his book [wikipedia.org], from Matthew Szulik when I worked at Red Hat around 2000. The book is well worth a read, to understand how technology and markets develo - as well as explaining some very interesting times in techology history.

Thanks for the buzzwords

[DrMrLordX]

Sorry he's dead and all - cancer really sucks. Sadly, thanks to his work, we now have 34809287952034750 middle managers and wannabe startup CEOs flogging buzzwords like "disrupt" and "disruption" to death. Whenever I hear some corporate idiot discuss "disruption" on his way to his next golf outing, the queezy feeling of mild disgust is similar to what I get when some Fox News moron says "impactful".

Language can evolve, but not always for the better.

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[TigerPlish]

the queezy feeling of mild disgust is similar to what I get when some Fox News moron says "impactful".

Same as when I hear "Synergistic," "Holistic"

May as well go bust some paradigms!

But not as bad as the waves of nausea I get when I hear CNN spout "Problematic" or "troublesome" or "inclusive".

See? Two can play at this game, ya troll.

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[DrMrLordX]

Nothing trollistic about it. CNN probably says "impactful" as well.

Re: Thanks for the buzzwords

[LifesABeach]

there is so much i would like to say about his impact on america. his famous quote of "employees are a cost to be minimized" would affect billions.

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[DrMrLordX]

Seems like he was only cribbing from Neutron Jack's playbook.

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[JaredOfEuropa]

Is he to blame for that? Looks like the use of the word disruption [google.com] peaked well before his book was published.

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[nukenerd]

... the use of the word disruption peaked well before his book was published.

Yes, but the use of the word "Disruption" meant a bad thing in the past.

Like I have just updated my version of KDE and it has disrupted my email client (kmail) - by which I mean I can't get the the fucking thing working again. That is the sense in which I know "disruption" and it does not give me good vibes.

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[nukenerd]

.... wannabe startup CEOs flogging buzzwords like "disrupt" and "disruption" to death. Whenever I hear some corporate idiot discuss "disruption" on his way to his next golf outing, the queezy feeling of mild disgust

Relax, it's just a new word for "innovative", which was a new word for "revolutionary", which was a new word for "inventive". And "invention" was invented a long time ago. They have to keep inventing new words for it.

very important compliment ??

[50000BTU_barbecue]

I don't get that. Who complimented who, and how was it important? Perhaps "complement"??

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[nukenerd]

That's not how Microsoft profits.

Whoopsie

[Dunbal]

Looks like his life was - disrupted - by cancer.

Father of the iPhone

[bill_mcgonigle]

I forget if it was /Dilemma/ or /Solution/ but he clearly laid out the problems with the Blackberry and how to solve them. It was practically a paint-by-numbers exercise for Jobs to build the iPhone using Apple's in-house technology.

Jobs credits Clayton, at least indirectly, but anybody who's read the books knows how it became more successful than just an iPod-with-cellular service would have been.

Little doubt Bill Gates grokked the theory, morns

[Locutus]

He and his management team for decades attacked any technology which wasn't a Windows-only platform and especially those which were cross platform.
C++ frameworks, CORBA, JAVA, Netscape, Dimension-X, Go Inc, IBM, Palm Inc, etc etc
He and his people were obsessed with knowing who was using what technology which wasn't tied to Windows' hip and keeping track of both mind share and market share so to know when to leverage DOS and Windows distribution licensing to attack.

This was probably the one thing which kept

It's true..

[Dynamoo]

It's true.. although I'd never heard of him and haven't read the book, I see exactly what he describes in my own industry. Small companies constantly evolved and outmanoeuvre big ones because they are more change agile. But either they grow into the behemoths that they once out-competed, or they get bought out by the bigger companies but then lost their agility. But then new disruptors rise and the cycle begins again.

OP does poor job explaining what it is about

[Kartu]

Mainframes also seem to be a terrifyingly bad example.
Personal computers have not replaced mainframe. PC was about totally new use cases for computers, which, thanks to silicon industry developing at amazing pace, also have quickly become more powerful and cheaper.

IBM overlooked NEW MARKET, but it hadn't stopped it from winning the lion's share of PC market, once they've figured people really wanted those clumsy expensive plastic boxes at home.

And, isn't "if there is a startup that is potentially threatenin

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[nukenerd]

Personal computers did not disrupt mainframes until IBM (the big company in this story) made PCs respectable corporate equipment rather than toys for hobbyists, and then did very nicely out of it. It was not entirely a new case because many corporates were sold IBM PCs on the misunderstanding that they were the latest terminals for mainframes (they could emulate a mainframe terminal) and the purchasing departments hadn't a clue.

There are lots of cases of big corporates being innovative - Kodak made the f

Pay Back Time ?

[nukenerd]

He's been disrupted. It comes to us all, RIP.