Clayton M. Christensen is the Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, and is widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost experts on innovation and growth.
Christensen has served as a director on the boards of a number of public and private companies. He is currently a board member at Tata Consulting Services (NSE: TCS), Franklin Covey (NYSE: FC), W.R. Hambrecht, and Vanu Inc. Christensen also serves on Singapore’s Research, Innovation and Enterprise Council (RIEC), and has advised the executives of many of the world’s major corporations.
Christensen is an experienced entrepreneur, having started three successful companies. Prior to joining the HBS faculty, Professor Christensen served as chairman and president of CPS Technologies a firm he co-founded with several MIT professors in 1984. In 2000, Christensen founded Innosight, a consulting firm that uses his theories of innovation to help companies create new growth businesses. In 2007, he founded Rose Park Advisors, a firm that identifies and invests in disruptive companies. Christensen is also the founder of Innosight Institute, a non-profit think tank whose mission is to apply his theories to vexing societal problems such as healthcare and education.
Professor Christensen is the bestselling author of five books, including his seminal work The Innovator’s Dilemma (1997) which received the Global Business Book Award for the best business book of the year, The Innovator’s Solution (2003), and Seeing What’s Next (2004). Recently, Christensen has focused the lens of disruptive innovation on social issues such as education and health care. Disrupting Class (2008) looks at the root causes of why schools struggle and offers solutions, while The Innovator’s Prescription (2009) examines how to fix our healthcare system. Four of his five books have received awards as the best books in their categories in the years of their publication.